BALTIMORE – House Democrats arrived here for their annual issues retreat vowing to unite in their opposition of President Donald Trump — with “fight” being the operative word in their strategy.

Democratic leaders focused their first public appearance on slamming just about every decision Trump has made since taking office Jan. 20. It included criticisms of a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, matters of foreign policy and promises to gut the  Affordable Care Act.

“A fight is what we’re in. A fight for our nations values, a fight for our nation’s future,” Rep. Joseph Crowley said. “The fight before us, though, is a difficult one and the list is long.

House Democrats Plot Way Back to Power … Again

The New York Democrat and chairman of the Democratic caucus said he’s never seen the party so energized on a single focus: “Fighting to prevent President Trump and congressional Republicans from hurting our country and hurting our people and quite frankly hurting the world.”

Crowley said he has been asked if Democrats can keep up the momentum for the next four years considering the president has been in office less than one month.

“Won’t this fight get tiring? People may ask that,” Crowley said. “Will we weaken? People may ask that. We have resolve and the answer is absolutely not.”

Meanwhile, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi renewed her call to have the FBI investigate connections between Trump and Russia and continued to urge the president to release his tax returns.

Pelosi said she and other members have asked FBI Director James Comey to tell them whether he is conducting such a probe.

“We’ve asked him over and over again in classified and other settings to tell us if he’s doing this investigation,” Pelosi said.

Comey’s answer was two-fold, Pelosi said. He either could not reveal an investigation because it would compromise the probe, or that he would reveal an investigation was taking place in the case of “significant national interest.”

 “He’s been asked in many different settings by many different people, ‘Are you doing this investigation, we urge you to do this investigation,’” Pelosi said.

The California Democrat said she hoped the House and Senate Intelligence committees would have enough cooperation from Republicans to issue subpoenas on the matter, but said she was “not certain that the Republicans in Congress will cooperate.”

Contact Rahman at remarahman@cqrollcall.com or follow her on Twitter at @remawriter