Some Signs of Hope
Something to keep us out of despair
Looking for a way to take action?
is facilitating a session this Thurs, Feb 27th (1-2:30pm EST) with my organization called “Writing for Change: Using Our Gifts to Resist.” Sliding scale starts at $10 and the session will be recorded and sent to all registrants.
Since the daily onslaught of coup attempts from the Executive Branch, I kept searching for news stories typing the question “what do Republican voters think of Elon Musk?” I honestly could not fathom that Elon Musk and his teenage hacker goons having access to every little piece of our personal data was something most of them wanted or voted for.
Sure, I knew there’d be the inevitable regretful claims: “I didn’t think he’d actually do [insert XYZ egregious thing Trump promised during the election] when I voted for him.” But I don’t think most of us saw Elon Musk as our Co-President as what was going to happen. So I wondered if Trump voters were thinking the same thing.
Alas, in those first weeks, it was hard to find anything that answered my question. But then, last week, the town halls started to happen. I felt like something changed this last week and the cracks in the coup are starting to show. And we’re seeing it at town halls. And not just meetings held in liberal districts, but in districts where Trump won by double-digit margins.
And that’s where hope started to creep in. It made me realize that the resistance is alive and well and might not look the same in every place. In some places it’s going to look like protesting in the streets and sometimes it’s going to be a town hall. In others, it’s going to be a quiet resistance not to respond to an email asking a government worker to email Elon Musk your accomplishments from last week and in some cases it’s going to be hanging an upside down American flag on a national park icon.
So to give you a little dose of hope, here is a little rundown of what I’ve seen that give me hope that the resistance might have some momentum.
Town Halls with People Demanding Their Lawmakers Take Action
I’ve come across a handful of stories that show just how made people are, even folks in Republican strongholds:
Example One: On February 19th, in La Grande in Union County in Eastern Oregon—the conservative 2nd Congressional District where 68% of the population voted for Trump this last election—Rep. Cliff Bentz held a town hall where people were not going to let him off the hook. People packed the theater at Eastern Oregon University where it was held and here’s a highlight from the La Grande Observer story:
“A vocal majority of the audience expressed frustration and anger with President Donald Trump's executive orders, the firing of thousands of federal workers and the actions of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.”
While the article notes that Bentz defended Trumps actions and seemed to try to strike a balance by saying it can be a challenge to downsize the government. While he didn’t seem to give into the majority of challenges to this, I’m very curious what this is going to mean for the primary and other future elections.
Example Two: Georgia Representative Rich McCormick—whose district in which Trump won by 20 points—faced boos and heckles from the crowd in a town hall last week when asked about cuts to the federal workforce. You can read all about it on CNN. Gotta love seeing these maniacs being yelled at.
Example Three: Ohio Republican (whose district Trump won by 18 points), Troy Balderson said that the Trump cuts were “getting out of control.” He also said: "Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away. Not the president, not Elon Musk. Congress decides." Hooray, a Republican in Congress is actually speaking up! Now let’s see if that turns into action.
Here’s a rundown from Crooked Media on both of those complete with a clip of McCormick getting yelled at:
Example Four: People aren’t just pushing their Republican representatives, but Democrats too. I’ve been so angry seeing barely a tiny little effort being made by the Democratic party and people are pissed. In NY-20, a veteran teacher gave an impassioned speech at a townhall with Rep. Paul Tonko asking him to think like John Lewis and Jimmy Carter. “You should be getting arrested,” this guy said, “and I’ll be there right with you.” This is the kind of energy we need right now and it’s beautiful!
Resistance from the Workers From Within
One visual that we’ve seen across the internet this last week was the upside-down American flag—historically made as a sign of distress—hanging off of El Capitan. This protest was reported to have been led by Park Service employees.
This visual actually made me tear up. I had been thinking about our public lands and the NPS and Forest Service employees who were fired (as you know from last week’s post) and have been emotional reading the stories of these earnest people unceremoniously fired from their dream jobs.
Speaking of the NPS and resistance from within, it bears including the wonderful people behind the Alt National Park Service social media accounts who are serving as leaders to the resistance through their communication efforts. Their efforts give me hope.
Trump’s Popularity is Slipping Just One Month In
This week a bunch of polls were released evaluating Trump’s work in office thus far, which essentially helped answer the question I was wondering about way back in weeks one and two of this terrible Administration. While I’m skeptical of polling in general, it’s still something that helps get a pulse of where Americans are at on things outside of elections. And where Americans are at is not behind Trump’s main agenda.
Trump’s approval ratings are slipping well into the 40s (it’s never been too high in the first place, only around 50% approval). The Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that the policies least popular amongst Americans include laying off government workers (39%), shutting down USAID (38%), blocking health agencies from communicating without Trump appointee approval (25%), and the lowest of pardoning people convicted of violent crimes on January 6th (14%).
And when it comes to Elon, most Americans (52-28—nearly a two-to-one margin) viewed Musk’s role in the Administration as a “bad thing.” Even Republican-leaning people (around 37%) are at least “somewhat” concerned about Musk’s role.
It’s frustrating because we knew a second Trump term would be unhinged and seeing people waking up to that reality after they voted him in is infuriating. But here we are.
The Noise is Having an Effect
After the National Park Rangers were fired, people were pissed and apparently this had some kind of effect and some NPS and Forest Service jobs are being restored (although only 50 it looks like of the 3,400, so not sure what that’s going to do) and the Administration says they’ll allow some seasonal hiring to continue of about 7,700 seasonal employees.
Some HHS and USDA layoffs have been reversed which likely came from political pressure from Congress. This all coming after the Administration was reminded how essential the people are who keep our nuclear facilities safe and are helping to prevent bird flu and they had to try to rehire these people “humpty dumpty style” I heard NPR’s Morning Edition newscaster say which made me LOL.
Yesterday Trump said to government workers to ignore the email Elon Musk sent out to them to justify their work that they could ignore the email. Are the Trump-Musk castle walls crumbling?
A federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the anti-DEI executive orders. And not to mention courts blocking bans on birthright citizenship, federal grants and loan freezes, transfer of trans prisoners, and bans on gender transition care for minors.
All of these wins feel so small and incremental when we think about what we’re up against. But they’re something. I’m especially heartened to see people speaking up and doing it loudly and vociferously all over the country. Of course we’re seeing circumstances where a woman was dragged by unnamed “security” from a town hall. But we’re also seeing Republican lawmakers having to answer for their compliance to Trump in front of their voters.
It gives me hope because the resistance is building.
Do I want to see democratic lawmakers taking more radical steps? Absolutely—what have they been doing just standing around filming some dude “blocking” their way into the Department of Education? But there’s movement and if we demand that these people take more radical steps, then maybe they will.
My point is that all of these moments added together are big. It’s a collective effort coming from all over the country. And for how shitty social media can be, it’s helpful to see people taking bold action, standing up for what they believe in, and telling (and even yelling at) their lawmakers to do the right thing. Their actions give more people courage to do the same. And when more of that happens, we have a revolution, y’all!