Notes on Not Surrendering
I have faith in the American people--faith that we're an unruly, insubordinate bunch scattered across a vast swathe of land, from our beautifully diverse cities to our remotest rural communities, that we are not easy to subdue and control, that even those who have supported the current authoritarian cult will not like losing some of the federal government's services that make our lives livable, that we have more power than is recognized and that some of us are already organizing to use it.
Protests and organizing of all kinds are happening, from high-school student walkouts to protest attacks on immigrants to demonstrations in front of hospitals from New York to Los Angeles that are complying with the malicious order suspending gender-affirming care for young trans people. More demonstrations in defense of rights and a functioning nation are being organized nationwide, including by unions, by the newly formed 50501, and by Indivisible, which was magnificent during the first Trump Administration, and is back in strength, organizing through many local chapters as well as at the national level. Tomorrow is a big day of action, with information available here and organizing by, in part, the Federal Unionists Network (yeah, acronym FUN). There are not that many actions listed right now, but you can call your friends and organize your own. Remember that a handful of people with signs bearing clear messages can have an impact.
Yesterday was President's Day, or as I thought of this version of it, Unprecedented Day. Americans across the country, from snowy Buffalo to San Diego, protested at the Washington Mall and the White House, showed up at demonstrations at their state houses, city halls, and rallied--again– in front of Tesla salesrooms. I didn't make it to the San Francisco protest in front of Tesla at 999 Van Ness Avenue, where another protest will take place tomorrow at 5:30pm with, reportedly, a number of federal employees and representatives of their unions present. But friends reported that not only were the drivers honking in support of the thousand or so people who eventually blocked the wide street, but a small sign on the second floor of the building was spotted saying, simply, "WE HATE HIM TOO." There's another demonstration there tomorrow, at 5:30pm, at which I'm told many federal employees are expected to show up.
The huge amount of support and even adulation for Luigi Mangione, the twenty-six-year-old accused of shooting down the CEO of United Healthcare on a Manhattan sidewalk last fall, is a reminder that even before the regime change four weeks ago today, there was a groundswell of resentment against the deprivation of the many by the grotesquely wealthy few. It is that few and their minions attacking us all now. The attacks on the federal government, and on our rights, on the privacy of our records, on the stuff we need to survive, will impact all of us ultimately. A lot of people who were oblivious--to why air travel has in recent decades been very safe, why you can pop into a well-run national park for a day or a campout, why we have social services and subsidies for healthcare for the old and (some of) the poor, where a lot of the orderliness and stability of our lives comes from, including food safety and functioning transportation--are about to find out how it works. Or worked.
Ronald Reagan famously said, in 1986, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help." It was a double lie, in that Reagan's real agenda wasn't small government per se, and in that a lot of people in this country received crucial direct and indirect help and benefit then as now from Social Security, Medicare, food, water, and transportation safety, funding for education and public health. His real agenda was tax cuts and other economic rearrangements that would dismantle the economic security created by the federal government from the New Deal to the Great Society to individual social programs. We are now seeing that agenda taken to its logical conclusion, with the outright destruction of a functioning federal system led by a couple of deranged billionaires out for themselves, and ever-increasing precariousness and desperation for the many. I know I'm defending the federal government and we all know it's a mixed bag; I've organized protests against ICE, I've been protesting US wars much of my life--but know that the bag contains a lot of necessary and good departments too. (More on that soon.)
I've seen many public statements on social media and in interviews by federal employees whose lives just got wrecked by sudden firings--there are a lot of them, and while the impact will be felt most in and around Washington, D.C., I read two heartbreaking posts by idealistic national park employees--one in Iowa, one in Arkansas--who loved their work, the land they cared for, and the people they worked with and are suddenly unemployed. The people who know these ex-employees and who benefit from their work are going to feel the impact. Another post making the rounds is by a USAID employee working in South Africa; when his wife's pregnancy became a medical emergency, she failed to receive the medical support that was supposed to be part of the job; he's a plaintiff whose testimony is here.
The right has tried to make us all hate civil servants, demonized them as deadbeats and useless bureaucrats or in a term popularized in 2016 the Deep State; the public is about to find out all the things federal civil servants did that they cherish, from managing public lands to preventing contagious disease to firefighting. A Tennessee newspaper reports that even Republican congresspeople are "raising concerns about how reducing the federal workforce by potentially hundreds of thousands of people and canceling spending approved by Congress will affect the country—especially the regions filled with loyal GOP voters."
I hope people are continuing to call their elected representatives--we know that they got huge numbers of calls in the first few weeks of this takeover (and yeah, it's worth telling Republicans as well as Democrats how you feel and what you want from them). Many are quietly organizing to support immigrants and protect them ICE. Some are distributing "know your rights" cards for immigrants, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) makes a great card oyou can download in many languages from the links at the bottom of the ILRC page here. The work to get birth control and abortion pills to those who need them, launched in earnest after Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022, seems to be ramping up, and it is of course as low-profile as the participants can make it, for their safety and that of the people they aid. (There's a link for abortion pills by mail here.) Call. Donate. March. Speak up.
A lot of federal employees are not cooperating with the coup, and while you can assume there's a whole lot we cannot see, many of the high-level resignations are public: CNN reports: "The top criminal prosecutor in the Washington, DC, US Attorney’s Office, Denise Cheung, resigned Tuesday after declining a request from her Trump-appointed superiors to open a grand jury investigation that she viewed as premature, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Cheung, a long-time DOJ employee, had been asked to shepherd an investigation into an Environmental Protection Agency funding decision during the Biden administration." The Washington Post reports, "The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday." Newsweek reports that eight inspectors general, including Trump appointee Hannibal "Mike" Ware, are suing the Trump Administration over their firings, charging they were illegal. Ware declares, " During my time as Inspector General, I have returned over $40 billion to the U.S. Treasury" in a reminder that this was never about efficiency or saving the government money.
A lot of lawsuits have been filed, and a lot of them have been won already--and in a number of cases Team Musk/Trump has backed off when ordered to by the courts, though it looks like we're heading into some more constitutional crisis when they don't. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the groups behind of a lawsuit whose named plaintiffs include American Federation of Government Employees and the Association of Administrative Law Judges, seeking to halt the "unlawful, systematic, wholesale, continuous, and ongoing disclosure of Plaintiffs’ and their members’ sensitive personal data to DOGE Defendants and their agents, including to Elon Musk or to any other person." A scholar on BlueSky concludes that of the 76 actions that the Trump/Must team has taken, half are being opposed, a quarter in the courts. She adds, "Some lawsuits have already resulted in preliminary injunctions. There are a LOT of people/organisations doing a LOT. Three of the org types bringing lawsuits are (blue) states, labour orgs & civil rights orgs. The 4th lawsuit category is NGOs, health/education bodies." There's this one against Musk by a John Doe federal employee here, and a suit the ACLU has filed to defend birthright citizenship is here. Justsecurity.org lists a lot of the lawsuits here.
The administrative branch of the federal government has launched a coup against the law, the people, the stability of this country, and the other two branches of government. The judiciary branch is doing a lot to overturn and limit its actions, with judges generally holding the line on the law both in their rulings and in their tough language. The legislative branch--Congress--is not, and the Democrats who are a minority in both houses seem to be mostly failing to even communicate effectively with their constituents and the public. I assume that some of the stronger members are doing good work quietly, but the lack of effective, coordinated communication is part of their voluntary weakness right now. The media overall is not doing a good job of raising the alarm, and the most powerful individuals and corporations appear to be, for the most part, surrendering or standing aside (what happened to all those celebrities who supported Harris last fall?). We're in trouble. But we're not helpless.
Trump won the election by a slim 1.5% margin and got less than 50% of the total vote. About 39% of the electorate didn't vote, while, rounded off, around 31% voted for Harris or Trump. He got 77 million votes in a country of 347 million people, meaning that less than a quarter of the population voted for him and many voted for him because they were misinformed either by distorted mainstream as well as right-wing media coverage or his false promises and are waking up to the brutal realities. Though many of his and Musk's threats were clear (to those of us informed by better news media, anyway). His administration is attacking women, BIPOC and LGBTQ residents of this country, federal employees, people with disabilities, medical coverage, farmers, federal workers. If you add up all those constituencies and impacts, you see a presidency chosen by a minority that has launched a war against the majority.
The majority does not like this, and as I wrote Sunday we can make that matter when we act. And we are acting--it's far from enough yet, but it's also far from nothing (and likely more than they bargained for). I would never say "we are going to be okay" because some of us are already not okay four weeks into this insider coup. Nor would I say "we will get through this," because not everyone will. But I will say that we have not surrendered, and no matter what, I don't think a lot of us will.
Stand Up for Science is holding nationwide demonstrations on March 7. On February 20th, political scientist Erica Chenoweth and others will have a conversation drawing "upon lessons from around the world about how civil society groups can protect and promote democracy and the rule of law during episodes of democratic backsliding." I'll continue listing actions here and on my personal social media pages.
