Here's what's happening in DA Austria in May —
Message from the Chair
Upcoming Events:
- Salzburg Meet-up
- Solidarity Sundays in Vienna
- Pride Parade
- July 6, 2025 – July 4th Celebration, Vienna
Inside Democrats Abroad:
- Celebrate. Resist. March for Equality.
- 2025 Annual General Meeting and International ExCom Officer Elections
Issues and Actions:
- Counsel’s Corner
- Request your ballot – before it's too late!
- Save NPR and PBS
Review:
- Young Democrats – Cornhole Tournament
- Solidarity Sundays Vienna
- Museum Tour: KHM – Arcimboldo-Bassano-Bruegel
- Cinco de Mayo
- Progressive Caucus Project 2025: Cross Country Reality Check
Our Executive Committee meetings are usually held on the second Thursday of the month. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, June 5, at 7:00 p.m. Members are welcome to join us at the meetings. Please contact Lisa Savitt at [email protected] for the address and meeting link.
DAA is making a concerted effort to include in our monthly newsletter all the information you need to stay up to date. By sending you fewer emails, we hope you will read those you receive. Thanks for reading!
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Message from the Chair:
Although the focus on the midterms is not yet upon us, there will be many opportunities for Democrats Abroad Austria members to engage. I have enjoyed attending the recent events and getting to know DA members. It is important to know that as Democrats outside the United States, we are not alone, nor are we without power. Democrats Abroad mobilized its voters from North Carolina for the recent N.C. Supreme Court legal battle, which ended in the Democratic judge being declared the winner. Democrats Abroad also galvanized members to speak out against the SAVE Act, which is currently stalled in the Senate. See some of the activities coming up below and stay tuned for specific action items.
— Lisa Savitt, DA Austria Chair
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Upcoming Events:
Salzburg Meet-up
When: May 16, 2025
Time: 5:30–8:00 p.m.
Where: Krimplestätter Restaurant, Müllner Hauptstrasse 31, Salzburg 5020
Solidarity Sundays 2.5: Ditch the PowerPoints!
When: Sunday, May 18, 2025
Time: 4–6 p.m.
Location: Amerlinghaus/Innenhof Saal, Stiftgasse 8, 1070 Wien
Vienna Pride Parade: No Kings, Only Queens! Pride is Power!
When: June 14, 2025
Time: 12:00–16:00 p.m.
Where: To watch: in the vicinity of Opernring 17 (under the trees). To march: contact Hilary for our starting location.
Questions: [email protected]
July 4th Celebration
When: Sunday, July 6, 2025
Time: 12:00–16:00 p.m.
Where: Die Schankwirtschaft im Augarten
Young Democrats TBA
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Inside Democrats Abroad:
🎉 Join Us at the Vienna Pride Parade – June 14! 🏳️🌈
Celebrate. Resist. March for Equality.
Democrats Abroad Austria is proud to participate once again in the Vienna Pride Parade on Saturday, June 14 — and we want YOU with us! This year, we’re not just celebrating — we’re protesting against rising hate, attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, and the rollback of democratic values around the world. We'll be marching under the theme, No Kings, Only Queens! Pride is Power!
🌟 Ways to Get Involved:
✊ Organize with us – we need creative minds and helping hands to make a bold statement.
🏳️🌈 March with us in the parade – bring your signs, your spirit, and your voice!
📍 Join us along the route – DA will be set up on the Opernring! RSVP for the exact location.
📬 Want to help organize?
Email: [email protected]
📅 Ready to march?
Go to the event on our event page and RSVP:
Let’s stand together for love, equality, and democracy.
Save the date: June 14. Bring your pride. Bring your protest. Spread the word. ✊🏳️🌈
— Hilary Monihan, DA Austria Member-at-Large Events Coordinator
2025 Democrats Abroad Annual General Meeting and International ExCom Officer Elections
Our election of new officers for the 2025–2027 Democrats Abroad International Executive Committee is to be held on June 8, 2025, as an online meeting, following the Annual General Meeting (AGM) on June 6, 7, and 8.
The DPCA body will also be considering and voting on Resolutions and Charter Amendments during the AGM – please go to the event page for a complete list of sessions. There will be a number of candidate forums and resolution and charter discussions taking place that are open for general participation. Please be sure to rsvp to receive the links to the session you would like to join. The Annual General Meeting and EMEA Regional Meeting are also open to all DA members. Please RSVP to receive the link.
— Jen Rakow-Stepper, DA Austria Treasurer, International ExCom RVC-EMEA
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Issues and Actions:
Counsel’s Corner: The Dinner Bet
Hello everyone, and welcome to Counsel's Corner. The media has been reporting on the many legal challenges brought right now in the United States against the Administration - more than 200 cases, and increasing every day.
In the big picture right now, it might be fair to say that the Administration controls,
or has great influence over, all three branches of Government. This has happened before, but what is so striking now is the degree to which Congress and the Supreme Court have acted in alignment with the President. In this environment, some wonder whether our system of checks and balances, which the founders of our country designed 238 years ago, will survive.
I am one of them.
Many of these cases include fascinating substantive issues which we'll see play out over time, including separation of powers, executive privilege, the state secrets privilege, the limits of executive orders, the authority of Congress to establish and abolish agencies, the power of the president to fire civil servants, the power of the Administration to seize and deport individuals, executive orders directed at particular entities, safekeeping of private information, federal record keeping, and many other interesting topics.
The most interesting and consequential, tying all these cases together, is whether the Administration will follow the orders courts issued. The Administration is testing the outer limits of judicial authority now, even calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against it. Following an adverse ruling in the Alien Enemies Act deportation case, "Border Czar" Tom Homan said, "We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Federal courts "have no jurisdiction over how the President conducts foreign affairs." And President Trump said, "This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!"
These comments and others likely caused the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, to issue a written statement on March 18, 2025, saying: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” The deportation case, and others like it, include arguments about presidential power and compliance with judicial rulings. This brings me to the title of this essay.
The United States is a country based on the rule of law. What happens if the Administration ignores court orders? Perhaps an entire branch of our government will lose its authority. Should the judges pack up their robes and go home? Will the Constitution be irreparably damaged, threatening the existence of the country as we know it? A friend grew up in a communist country and reminds me how quickly the government can change from a democracy to a dictatorship. I said not to worry because, of course, in the end, the Administration will have to comply with court orders. The friend said they won't, and offered to buy me dinner if that happens. Who's going to win the bet? I don't know. It's an extraordinary time in the United States right now. Perhaps the Constitution will stand firm. I'd like to buy dinner.
— David S. Schuman, DA Austria Counsel
Request your ballot - before it's too late!
With the SAVE Act headed to the Senate and a Trump Executive Order rolling out to make voting from abroad massively more difficult, now is the time to request your ballot (and ask your friends to register too).
Go to VoteFromAbroad.org to get started.
If you're from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, you've got state-wide races to prepare for. And even if you're not from one of these states, sending in a ballot request now means you're ready in case a special election is called this year — like the U.S. House races in Arizona 7 and Texas 18. Many states have local and state elections you may be eligible to participate in.
If there’s any year when you should vote “down ballot,” this is it.
Save NPR and PBS
Trump just signed an executive order to cut off all federal funding to NPR and PBS, calling them “woke propaganda.” At the same time, Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation to slash over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the main funder of local public media across the U.S.
These attacks don’t just target national programming — they threaten over 1,000 local NPR and 336 PBS stations, many of which provide the only source of news or emergency alerts in rural communities.
📞 Call your representatives now and tell them to protect public broadcasting.
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Review:
Young Democrats – Cornhole Tournament
Our Young Americans Cornhole Tournament was an a-MAIZE-ing success! After a few rounds our winners took home their real corn prizes: corn chips, hominy, and blue (because we're Democrats) corn tortillas. Fourteen people attended, some of whom joined for the first time. The next event will be in May — stay tuned for more!
— Bryan Quandt, Young Democrats Co-Coordinator
Solidarity Sundays Vienna 2.4: Messages & Bridges
Solidarity Sundays‘ April gathering was run by the Media & Messaging group, who tackled communication strategies for Democrats. Simon Bellamy presented Public service Announcements ad concepts including Trump's promises versus outcomes, and a "Faces of Lost Federal Services" series. We discussed paths to push these ideas up through DNC channels.
Dardis McNamee then led us through techniques for conversations across political lines. She presented three approaches:
- think like a journalist to understand perspectives;
- explore values behind opinions with "Why do you think that?"; and
- find common ground through shared values such as respect for the military, due process, and free speech.
Want Dardis’s Difficult Conversations handout? Email [email protected] for a copy. Because let's face it—we all need better tools for those family dinner debates.
—Tanya Lolonis, Solidarity Sundays Co-Coordinator
Questions: [email protected]
Museum Tour: KHM–Arcimboldo-Bassano-Bruegel
On April 24, 2025, DA Austria was treated to a fantastic tour of the Arcimboldo - Bassano – Bruegel. The Times of Nature exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM). Led by one of the exhibition’s curators, the tour introduced a fulsome group of over 20 DA Austria members to the exhibit’s interpretation of the immutable themes of time, nature, and humanity, exploring the complex connections between humans and the natural world in 16th century Europe.
Working during the European Renaissance, these painters, as well as works by such well-known artists as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci, respond to the thrilling cultural, scientific, technological, social and political innovations of their day. Equally important, these artists pioneered their own remarkable representations of – and contributed to broader movements exploring – the cycles of nature, the passage of time, nature, and humanity at an historic moment when science and especially the printing press were bringing innovation in the arts and sciences to a broader European and even global audience in entirely new and innovative ways. It is in this context that the exhibit explores how these artists understood, and posed questions about, the natural world, focusing, in particular, on “the interplay between humanity, nature, and time – an enduring theme that remains as relevant today as it was in the past.”
If you were not able to catch the tour, it runs through June 29 at the KHM. Check out the fascinating exhibit and the KHM, an absolute treasure of European art right here in Vienna!
— Jacqueline Berman, DA Austria Secretary
Cinco de Mayo
We had a great time at Maiz 1 celebrating Cinco de Mayo, eating delicious tacos, and savoring the best spicy margaritas in town! Thank you, of course, to the Maiz team for hosting us and for everyone who joined us despite the rain. Stay tuned for more get-togethers and hopefully see you there!
— Elisa Schmidt, DA Austria Member-at-Large
Progressive Caucus Project 2025 Cross Country Reality Check
The Progressive Caucus got together at L’Osteria Wien Florianigasse to catch up with new and old friends and to hear about the Project 2025 Cross Country Reality Check. You can follow the route they took and read updates and insights from their trip here.
— Lisa Savitt, DA Austria Chair