The resistance will not be rushed
I am not sure what my role in the resistance will be, as my feet and right hip frequently hurt. Also, it was announced in the news beginning several hours after the November presidential election that the resistance is muted, and/or that there is no resistance. Democrats and the opposition leaders — of whom there are apparently none anyway — don't know what to do.
But how could anyone?
When my mother fell into a steep decline with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes in 2000, my two brothers and I met with a gerontology nurse. She listened to our grief, confusion and absolute exhaustion. How would we know when it was time to move Mom to assisted living? How could we keep her from bingeing on the rolls and cookies she was shoplifting from Safeway, which the checkers paid for because they loved her? How could we get her to take her insulin when she was so confused? And the nurse replied gently, 'How could you know?'
This had not occurred to us. We thought we must be stupid not to know. She said, 'You guys all need a good, long rest.'
I think we need and are taking a good, long rest. Along with half of America, I have been feeling doomed, exhausted and quiet. A few of us, approximately 75 million people, see the future as a desert of harshness. The new land looks inhospitable. But if we stay alert, we'll notice that the stark desert is dotted with growing things. In the pitiless heat and scarcity, we also see shrubs and conviction.
Lacking obvious flash and vigor might seem as if there is no resistance. But it is everywhere you look.
It is in the witness and courage of the Right Rev. Mariann Budde. It is in the bags of groceries we keep taking to food pantries. It looks like generosity, like compassion. It looks like the profound caring for victims of the fires, and providing refuge for immigrants and resisting the idea that they are dangerous or unwanted, and reaching out to queer nieces, siblings and strangers and helping resist the notion that their identities are unworthy, let alone illegal.
It is in our volunteer support for public schools and libraries, because we know the new president holds them in contempt and fear. Teachers and librarians are allies for souls who have been dismissed as hopeless.
These unabashed do-gooders will definitely get the best seats in heaven, nearest the dessert table. What they have to offer — patience, companionship, poetry — is about to be defunded by the new administration, but not by us.
Resistance may depend on federal district court judges, but it will look like bake sales. Too bad my mom is no longer here to donate her stolen cookies, but I am here, as are all my friends.
They ask me for direction, because I am a Sunday school teacher, and they feel like children: 'How will we get through the next four years?'
I tell them a few things that always help me.
First, I tell them what my Jesuit friend Father Tom Weston says when I call him for help when I feel craziest. After assuring me once more that he can counsel Protestants, too, if they are pitiful enough, and no matter the exact details of the latest calamity at the dinner table or in D.C., he always says, 'We do what's possible.' So we are kind to ourselves. We take care of the poor. We get hungry kids fed. We pick up litter.
Second, I tell them what Susan B. Anthony's grandniece said. Also named Susan B. Anthony, she told her therapy clients that in very hard times, we remember to remember. Remember that the light always returns. Remember earlier dark nights of the soul, for ourselves, our families and our nation, when we fell in holes way too deep to ever get out of. Remember the Greensboro sit-ins and the march from Selma to Montgomery, the 2017 Women's March, the coronavirus vaccine. Remember how in the desert, down by the arroyo, you'll find dubious patches of pale green, maybe a random desert lily and, impossibly, baby leaves.
Molly Ivins would have told me on Nov. 6, 'Sweet Pea, we got our horse shot right out from under us.' We did, and it hurts like hell and we loved that horse, and people are laughing at us. We a little time here to decompress.
Now is a time of quiet. A passionate activist friend told me she doesn't feel very resisty yet, but one thing that characterizes deserts is the stillness, until the wind blows. And, boy, when it blows, it's like an organ. You can hear its shape and power because everything else is so still. How or when will the wind start up? How could we know? But it always does. Spring is less than two months away — warmth, light, daffodils, life bursting into its most show-offy self.
'Give me those far away in the desert,' Saint Augustine said, 'who are thirsty and sigh for the spring of the eternal country.'
I can tell you this: The resistance will be peaceful, nonviolent, colorful, multigenerational — we older people will march with you, no matter our sore feet and creaky joints. There will be beautiful old music. There will also be the usual haranguing through terrible sound systems, but oh well. Until then, this will be my fight song: left foot, right foot, breathe. Help the poor however you can, plant bulbs right now in the cold rocky soil, and rest.
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San Francisco Chronicle
41 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump branded, browbeat and prevailed. But his big bill may come at a political cost
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama had the Affordable Care Act. Joe Biden had the Inflation Reduction Act. President Donald Trump will have the tax cuts. All were hailed in the moment and became ripe political targets in campaigns that followed. In Trump's case, the tax cuts may almost become lost in the debates over other parts of the multitrillion-dollar bill that Democrats say will force poor Americans off their health care and overturn a decade or more of energy policy. Through persuasion and browbeating, Trump forced nearly all congressional Republicans to line up behind his marquee legislation despite some of its unpalatable pieces. He followed the playbook that had marked his life in business before politics. He focused on branding — labeling the legislation the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' — then relentlessly pushed to strong-arm it through Congress, solely on the votes of Republicans. But Trump's victory will soon be tested during the 2026 midterm elections where Democrats plan to run on a durable theme: that the Republican president favors the rich on tax cuts over poorer people who will lose their health care. Trump and Republicans argue that those who deserve coverage will retain it. Nonpartisan analysts, however, project significant increases to the number of uninsured. Meanwhile, the GOP's promise that the bill will turbocharge the economy will be tested at a time of uncertainty and trade turmoil. Trump has tried to counter the notion of favoring the rich with provisions that would reduce the taxes for people paid in tips and receiving overtime pay, two kinds of earners who represent a small share of the workforce. Extending the tax cuts from Trump's first term that were set to expire if Congress failed to act meant he could also argue that millions of people would avoid a tax increase. To enact that and other expensive priorities, Republicans made steep cuts to Medicaid that ultimately belied Trump's promise that those on government entitlement programs 'won't be affected.' 'The biggest thing is, he's answering the call of the forgotten people. That's why his No. 1 request was the no tax on tips, the no tax on overtime, tax relief for seniors,' said Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. 'I think that's going to be the big impact.' Hard to reap the rewards Presidents have seen their signature legislative accomplishments unraveled by their successors or become a significant political liability for their party in subsequent elections. A central case for Biden's reelection was that the public would reward the Democrat for his legislative accomplishments. That never bore fruit as he struggled to improve his poll numbers driven down by concerns about his age and stubborn inflation. Since taking office in January, Trump has acted to gut tax breaks meant to boost clean energy initiatives that were part of Biden's landmark health care-and-climate bill. Obama's health overhaul, which the Democrat signed into law in March 2010, led to a political bloodbath in the midterms that fall. Its popularity only became potent when Republicans tried to repeal it in 2017. Whatever political boost Trump may have gotten from his first-term tax cuts in 2017 did not help him in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats regained control of the House, or in 2020 when he lost to Biden. 'I don't think there's much if any evidence from recent or even not-so-recent history of the president's party passing a big one-party bill and getting rewarded for it,' said Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst with the nonpartisan University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Social net setbacks Democrats hope they can translate their policy losses into political gains. During an Oval Office appearance in January, Trump pledged he would 'love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.' 'We're not going to do anything with that, other than if we can find some abuse or waste, we'll do something,' Trump said. 'But the people won't be affected. It will only be more effective and better.' That promise is far removed from what Trump and the Republican Party ultimately chose to do, paring back not only Medicaid but also food assistance for the poor to make the math work on their sweeping bill. It would force 11.8 million more people to become uninsured by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office, whose estimates the GOP has dismissed. 'In Trump's first term, Democrats in Congress prevented bad outcomes. They didn't repeal the (Affordable Care Act), and we did COVID relief together. This time is different,' said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. 'Hospitals will close, people will die, the cost of electricity will go up, and people will go without food.' Some unhappy Republicans Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., repeatedly argued the legislation would lead to drastic coverage losses in his home state and others, leaving them vulnerable to political attacks similar to what Democrats faced after they enacted 'Obamacare.' With his warnings unheeded, Tillis announced he would not run for reelection, after he opposed advancing the bill and enduring Trump's criticism. 'If there is a political dimension to this, it is the extraordinary impact that you're going to have in states like California, blue states with red districts,' Tillis said. "The narrative is going to be overwhelmingly negative in states like California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey.' Even Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who eventually became the decisive vote in the Senate that ensured the bill's passage, said the legislation needed more work and she urged the House to revise it. Lawmakers there did not. Early polling suggests that Trump's bill is deeply unpopular, including among independents and a healthy share of Republicans. White House officials said their own research does not reflect that. So far, it's only Republicans celebrating the victory. That seems OK with the president. In a speech in Iowa after the bill passed, he said Democrats only opposed it because they 'hated Trump.' That didn't bother him, he said, 'because I hate them, too.'
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
Republicans praise 'big, beautiful bill's' work requirement for Medicaid: ‘We've got to get back to work'
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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
The GOP's Big Bill Is Massively Unpopular — If People Actually Know About It
The public's reviews of the centerpiece of Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda started coming in well before Trump signed it into law on Friday afternoon, and they've been overwhelmingly negative: Just 27% of registered voters support it in a Quinnipiac University survey, 38% support in Fox News poll, 36% approval from Morning Consult and 23% in a survey from The Washington Post and ABC News. All four surveys show a solid majority of the public opposes the legislation. The central ideas in the law — cutting taxes for the wealthy while slashing health and food aid for the poor and pouring money into an increasingly unpopular deportation machine and exploding the federal debt — are astoundingly unpopular. Their passage this week has Democrats promising political revenge, even openly dreaming about shattering the working-class coalition Trump crafted. But for backlash to the legislation to deliver political benefits to Democrats, they need to do more than convince voters to oppose it. They need to let voters, especially those who consume more TikTok than traditional television, know it exists in the first place. And there are warning signs Democrats' battle against Trump's signature proposal is becoming a replay of the 2024 election, when the voters who engaged the most with news and politics overwhelmingly backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris while those who avoided the news or engaged little backed now-President Donald Trump. Decisions in Washington don't just stay in Washington — they shape lives everywhere. HuffPost is committed to reporting on how policies affect real people. Support journalism that connects the dots. 'I think that people who are watching politics and concerned about our democracy are following this closely and understand what an abomination the bill is,' Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) told HuffPost on Wednesday night as House Republicans whipped their members into line. 'But for you know, people that are just trying to live their lives and get by, I don't think they realize that their health care, food assistance, environmental programs are all about to be gutted in just a few short hours.' Clearly, Democratic messaging is breaking through at least somewhat: Two GOP members of Congress — Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska — announced their retirement this weekend, giving Democrats a better shot at winning each of their toss-up seats in a 2026 midterm where the political environment is already expected to favor their party, giving them an excellent chance of winning the House and at least a puncher's chance of winning the Senate. 'Poll after poll has found that the Republican budget bill is widely unpopular, so it's safe to say that opposition messaging has broken through to some extent. The more voters learn about this monstrosity, the less they like it,' said Ryan O'Donnell, the interim executive director of the progressive polling outfit Data For Progress, noting the group's surveys found most voters expect the legislation to increase their family's cost of living. 'Democrats must seize upon the bill's baseline unpopularity and continue to brand it for the huge mistake that it is.' At the same time, a new poll from the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA will provide fresh fodder for the party's significant bedwetting contingent. The poll found 48% of Americans have not heard anything about the bill, including 56% of voters who flipped from supporting former President Joe Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024. The key dividing line? Interest in news. Roughly two-thirds of voters who passively consume the news or actively avoid know nothing about the legislation. 'Americans are 4x as likely to have heard about Iran bombings as they are to have heard about Medicaid cuts in the bill,' the group wrote in an accompanying memo. 'Awareness of the GOP bill is limited, diffuse and general in nature, at best.' The aforementioned survey from Morning Consult has a similar finding. While a sizable 38% chunk of the public says they've heard or read a lot about the bill, knowledge of the details is scarce, with only 17% of the public saying they've heard a lot about the legislation's Medicaid cuts. The results have some Democrats blaming journalists for not covering the legislation more — Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden declared on social media it meant the news media 'failed' — even though those consuming news coverage have an overwhelmingly negative opinion of the bill. Nick Ahamed, the deputy executive director of Priorities USA, said the results point to how both the news media and the Democratic Party have failed to adapt to a media environment where algorithmic video dominates most people's consumption and attention is a scarce resource. 'Arguing whether it's the medias' fault or Democrats' fault is missing the point — it's the algorithm's fault and everyone needs to figure out how to adapt,' Ahamed said. In an interview, Ahamed said the results show the need for Democrats to get more comfortable delivering something other than poll-tested talking points in safe environments, noting voters who backed both Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024 have heard more about the bill than any other group of voters. 'I would rather Democrats go talk about the bill in 100 different ways, in 100 different places where there's some sort of connection to that audience, rather than 'Oh, we need to be on message, talking about Medicaid' and only doing that in the places where we are talking about news of the day,' he said. Priorities USA, in particular, noted messaging about the legislation on Bluesky — a Twitter alternative loved by progressives — would do little good. Voters using it are already well-informed about the bill, and the platform's reach is limited. Similarly, appearing on podcasts already beloved by liberals won't do very much. Democrats directly involved in the 2026 midterm battle portrayed the messaging campaign as still in its earlier stages, noting hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on television and digital ads defining the legislation between now and November. One consultant pointed out the midterm electorate is likely to be heavy on older and more educated voters, who tend to be paying closer attention to the news. 'This is more of a 2028 problem than a 2026 one,' the consultant, requesting anonymity to speak frankly about party strategy, said. Indeed, a larger collection of Democratic groups released their own more optimistic memo on the situation Tuesday, encouraging Democrats to stick to one story, focused on how Republicans are taking things — affordable health care, cheap energy, food stamps — away from voters while handing tax cuts to the wealthy. Oh, and you should mention costs are high. 'Current research across issue areas and from different perspectives suggests the most effective approach to increasing opposition to the bill is to leverage concerns over rising costs,' the groups wrote. 'This is the context for our attack. Now, as the bill approaches potential final passage and receives more attention from the media and public, we must double-down on this winning strategy through focused and repetitive messaging on what Americans have to lose.' Sticking to this one frame, the memo argues, is crucial to reaching those voters who don't follow the news: 'By aligning to this one story across a diverse set of issues we will reach Americans who consume news passively with a simple, compelling story. This story will help voters make sense of this bill and the priorities of the Republican majority in Washington.' Republicans, meanwhile, are still hoping they can convince voters to see the good in a package they largely loathe, with various GOP groups arguing a focus on relatively small provisions — the temporary elimination of taxes on tips, for instance — and arguing Democrats were prepared to let taxes rise for working families will help sell the legislation. 'House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026,' the group wrote in a memo of its own. 'The NRCC will use every tool to show voters who stood with them, and who sold them out.' Arthur Delaney contributed reporting.
