Yes, things are bad. Yes, we are facing a not-so-slow-rolling coup. Yes, we are being governed by unprincipled and profoundly ignorant people. Yes, Trump’s horrific bill narrowly passed the Senate. But if we look, there’s also evidence that good people–good citizens–are fighting back. Effectively.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Americans of Conscience transmitted a long list of positive news items, “wins” for democracy, including everything from a town council in Barrington, Rhode Island unanimously voting to declare their town a sanctuary for transgender people, to Tulsa, OKlahoma’s announcement of a $105 million reparations package for the 1921 Tulsa massacre, to the thousands of people in Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Charlotte, San Diego, Boston, Houston, San Antonio, Minneapolis, Worcester, MA, and elsewhere showing up to support neighbors facing unjust ICE raids, detainment, and deportation, to the successful EarthJustice lawsuit requiring the USDA to restore deleted information about climate change from the government website.
There were dozens more.
Then there was the welcome news that the Senate Parliamentarian had tossed numerous provisions of the “Big Beautiful Bill” for violating the Byrd rule limiting what can be included in reconciliation bills. Among the provisions that were deleted:
A provision selling off millions of acres of federal lands
A provision to pass food aid costs on to states
A proposed limitations on food aid benefits to certain citizens or lawful permanent residents
Proposed restrictions on the ability of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions and temporary restraining orders
A proposal for a funding cap for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and for slashing pay of employees at the Federal Reserve
A proposal to slash $293 million from the Treasury Department’s Office ofFinancial Research
A plan to dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
An effort to repeal an EPA rule limiting air pollution emissions of passenger vehicles
An item allowing project developers to bypass judicial environmental reviews if they pay a fee
A measure deeming offshore oil and gas projects automatically compliant with the National Environmental Policy Act
A modified version of the REINS Act, which would increase congressional power to overturn major regulations
A scheme to punish so-called sanctuary cities by withholding federal grants
An increase on Federal Employees Retirement System contribution rate for new civil servants who refuse to become at-will employees
A measure seeking to extend the suspension of permanent price supportauthority for farmers
A requirement forcing sale of all the electric vehicles used by the Post Office
A change to annual geothermal lease sales and to geothermal royalties, June 24)
A proposal for a mining road in Alaska
Authorization for the executive branch to reorganize federal agencies
New fee for federal worker unions’ use of agency resources
Transfer of space shuttle to a nonprofit in Houston from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum
And that is only a partial list. The ruling deleted at least some elements of this obscene effort to rob the poor to further enrich the plutocrats–at least from the Senate version.
As Simon Rosenberg recently reminded readers of his “Hopium Chronicles,” Trump is struggling and unpopular. Despite his efforts to wag the dog, his poll numbers have steadily dropped. Overall, his approval is down 20 points from week one, but perhaps more significant is the evidence that his incursions into the Black, Latino and youth votes are dissipating. In week one, 29% of Black voters approved of him; that number is now 12%. Hispanic approval has fallen from 42% to 30%. And the approval of those between the ages of 18 and 29 has gone from 48% to 28%.
Rosenberg credits the thousands of grassroots groups that have emerged across the country, and the creation of
new media organizations like Meidas Touch and COURIER Newsroom. (He also notes that Substack is becoming a powerful new platform for our politics–part of the way that news and media consumption habits have changed in the past year.)
We’ve also seen the emergence of an entire new network of pro-democracy legal organizations, focused on defense of the Constitutional order, and increased pro-democracy activism by the nation’s 23 Democratic Attorney Generals.
New leaders are emerging, rising to the moment, breaking though (Newsom, Pritzker, Crockett, Murphy, Frost, AOC, Booker, Slotkin, Mamdani, etc)
We are communicating who we are right now through our opposition to Trump and our work to prevent his assault on the middle class, weakening of our health care system and abandonment of the Constitutional order. I think these fights are helping connect us to the core of who we are – champions of every day Americans, proud patriots who love this country and are willing to fight for it.
The good news is that good Americans are making what John Lewis called “Good Trouble.”
Thanks, I needed that.
Michele-I do not know you, but I concur with your 4 word sentence. Thank you.
I believe that revolutions have never been planned, but grow organically as we, the people, become increasingly concerned about what we are being robbed of, and we each have limited patience.
What united us is a shared reality.
I knew the Latino population approved of Trump, but I didn’t realize it was so high. Same with the African-Americans. They both got conned badly. I have no idea why so many Latinos support Trump. I guess I could say the same for women. The level of ignorance is astounding.
The US has been on a slow but steady decline for three generations, which suggests that the Boomers were part of the problem that led to the current mess we find ourselves in. If you look at Trump’s rallies, it is a majority of Boomers despite Trump’s policies. If you look at the Senate and Congress, they are nearly all boomers.
While the US decline has accelerated under Trump, this rapid fall is awakening activists and sparking rebellion. Sellouts and sycophants completely occupy Red States. Todd Young and Jim Banks graciously voted in favor of a bill that will decimate rural Indiana. And, they lied about cutting Medicaid.
Has anybody seen the journalists who confront the Republicans who lied about not cutting Medicaid? There are numerous videos on Facebook where journalists confront their congressional and senatorial representatives, asking them about the lies they have told their districts. How many of our “new media outlets” in Indiana have done the same to Hoosier reps? They were created to replace the poor journalism at Gannett-owned papers, but in reality, they are just as sycophantic.
I think many of us predicted that Trump would accelerate activism in the US and bring in people who had been sitting on the sidelines. We welcome the good news because there was also a risk that Americans would give up or fold. The pain coming from this Big Turd of a Bill, especially to rural America should activate many more American voters. We need the media to drill home who voted for this mess that is coming when hospitals in rural Indiana start to shutter. If the Democratic Party fails to make its move toward progressive politics, all this momentum will be lost.
Much needed this morning. Thank you.
Thank god for Senator Byrd and the Senate Parliamentarian! And thanks to Sheila for listing the many good things to be grateful for right now. My hope is that the GOP crazies in the House set the whole Big Bad Turd Bill back until doesn’t work, or send it back to the Senate GOP crazies with so many changes as to be unacceptable to them as well and the whole thing goes awry. Whatever. As for Lisa Murkowski, who I used to admire from afar, holy crap, lady, you couldn’t even stick to your principles long enough to vote against something you know damn well to be wrong wrong wrong? To admit that you would only vote against if it were going down to defeat, but not otherwise, i.e., if yours would be the deciding vote. Well, as it turns out, yours WAS the deciding vote, as the bill would have been defeated had you stood on your principles and voted no.
SIGH! Thanks, Sheila, for giving me a bit of hope this morning!
A pox on Murkowski, the newest version of Sen. Collins!
I expect that those lovely folks at The Heritage Foundation have been working overtime, while seriously drooling about the changes they hoped to make to the culture that allowed them to thrive in the first place. Their disdain for ordinary people has to be IMMENSE!
Apparently, they are fighting, tooth and nail, and everybody else’s skin, against the impact implicit in Modernization Theory, that as societies become more affluent “their politics become more liberal, democratic and rational.” OMG THAT’S SO WOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!
If enough Lilliputians tie enough strings on the Gulliver, we may yet save our constitutional democracy.
While I agree with Todd that boomers (of which I am one) are complicit in many respect with trumpism’s ongoing destruction, I would also point out a few other important observations. One, at every anti-trump protest that I have attended, and those that my even older boomer sisters have attended elsewhere, boomers by far are the largest number of participants. In my social network, the boomers are far more likely to be aware of, angry about and fighting against MAGAmania. We have the experience to recognize the horrors, and the time to act up. Two, the folks behind Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation’s other evil machinations are not boomers, by a long shot. Hell, the senators from Indiana are far from being boomers, Beckwith is a downright young man. My point is, evil knows no age limit. Ironically, the most evil amongst the P2025 authors and many elected officials tend to present as god-fearing Christians, who Jesus Christ would throw out of the temple, post haste… I take it as my challenge to try to help the youths in my social sphere understand what they are losing, and to urge them to fight along with this old lady!
Boy, did I get my wires crossed! I would have bet that Susan Collins would vote yes and Lisa Murkowski would be a no vote. I have to hand it to Collins. She’s never going to be an icon, like Margaret Chase Smith, but at least she stood up once in her life.
The “… unprincipled and profoundly ignorant people…” are in the driver’s seat. We probably won’t be able to stop some form of this Big Ugly Bill, but we can support those who are working on our behalf to entangle the Administration to stop as much of it as possible. I’ll be out there in a couple of weeks, with my new, all terrain walker, yelling and waving my sign.
Murkowski had the least to lose by voting against the BBB, and folded anyway. She says the decision was agonizing. I wonder how her agony compares to the agony of a mother whose child dies for lack of a vaccine or the agony of a young person who must give up their dreams to support an elderly relative who has lost their Medicaid or the agonies of Ukrainians abandoned by Trump or the agonies of the millions around the world who will suffer and die due to climate change, etc. What has she lost by kowtowing to a party she no longer even belongs to? Far more than she would have lost by voting no.
For those mentioning Lisa Murkowski, let me ask this, “If she was able to hold out her ‘YAY’ vote for exceptions benefiting Alaska, why didn’t every Senator do the same for their states? Why didn’t Senator Todd Young ask for carve-outs before he voted in favor?
To me, the whole voting process is performative bullshit negotiated in advance!
I have been watching Anthony Scaramucci talk about how to beat Trump and what the Democratic Party needs to do. We need people like him that understand how Trump reacts to things in order to plan ahead.
I never thought I would need to be out on the street waving a sign at 77, but here we are. Make good trouble on July 17, the 5th anniversary of John Lewis’ death. Indivisible has a list of protests that are planned.
Good trouble, for sure…. and good news helps–a lot…underlying much of what is here, in Sheila’s column, and the welcoming responses. To me there is a sense that people are gaining in awareness, however late, that they were conned and a path is now open for them to register their dissatisfaction about their own misguided votes….and engage to get the country back on track. They seem inclined to do just that. Too bad their Red State representatives don’t feel similarly inclined but they will feel the heat.
One could also sense something like “the hell with the country; we can’t fix it. Let’s make things better right here locally”. Not sure that will save us in the long run.
I’m glad that the first woman Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, cited Maga overreach for a cleansing “Byrd Bath”. Federal Juges can still hold the trump administration in Contempt of Court maintaining a check on their overreach. It’s telling that Senator John Thune, majority leader of the Senate, did not override the Parliamentarian’s findings and use his legitimate power to promote trump’s/Maga’s agenda.
It’s encouraging to hear/read how resistance, speaking out for true American values (Bill of Rights and rule of law) is having a growing positive effect. Thanks to Americans on the front lines who work under tremendous pressure to carry on with the protection of Democracy.
Rose – well said!
Lester, Thank you. Your compliment is encouraging during this challenging time.