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The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump 100 days: after tepid start, protest movements – and Democrats
Those opposed to Donald Trump's agenda started his second term on a worse footing than the beginning of his first term. This time, the social media platform owners who previously tried to tamp down on false claims stood with him at his inauguration. Some major media outlets attempted to stay in Trump's good graces. Democrats were wrecked by a popular vote loss, believing they lacked the backing to lead an opposition. The courts were stacked in Trump's favor and had ruled the president had absolute immunity from criminal punishment for 'official acts'. 'Strategically, we are objectively worse off this time than we were last time,' said David Karpf, a professor at George Washington University who studies political advocacy and strategy. While Trump's first term began with the massive Women's March, which drew millions from around the country, the second term's resistance grew more slowly and deliberately. As Trump passes his 100th day in the White House, the pushback to his agenda has grown considerably, and both Democratic lawmakers and people across the US have ramped up their actions in opposition to Trump and his policies that have struck directly at the established norms and practices of US governance. This opposition has included street protests across the country that have grown in size since February. The largest single day of protest since Trump retook the White House came on 5 April, dubbed 'Hands Off', when several million people rallied in cities and towns nationwide. The courts have also proved a potent avenue of pushback against the second Trump administration. Legal advocacy groups and Democratic attorneys general have hit Trump with lawsuit after lawsuit over his executive orders and policy directives. The Democratic attorneys general, in particular, have had a high level of success in stalling Trump's policies. Despite the common refrain that the Trump 2.0 protests have been tepid, research from Harvard's Crowd Counting Consortium showed that there were twice as many street protests between 22 January of this year and March than in the same period in Trump's first term. The 2025 People's March on 18 January, the Women's March successor, marked the most protests in a single day in over a year, the consortium found. These large demonstrations have come as the Trump administration cracks down on protesters, trying to deport some who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at their colleges. 'The fact you can get that many million people turning out shows that they are not all afraid enough yet,' said Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist in the Crowd Counting Consortium. 'It's important to have moments where there are breakthroughs on the public awareness – if you feel like what's going on is wrong, you're definitely not alone, and actually there's a lot of people who agree.' Vincent Bevins, who wrote a book about mass protest movements around the world in the 2010s and how those protests often did not lead to durable change, said the Women's March in 2017 was an important moment for the anti-Trump opposition, but that it didn't get in the way of Trump completing his first term and then winning another one. He said he thought the strategy that protesters are using this term – demonstrate against Trump's overreach instead of his inauguration – was an effective one. 'A repeat of the Women's March would have likely been read in larger society as saying, we wish that Kamala Harris would have won,' and that message does little when Trump already won the White House, Bevins said Though inauguration weekend was quiet in Washington – a drastic change from the estimated half-million people who came to the nation's capital during inauguration weekend in 2017 – people started taking to the streets again by February. The burgeoning, often decentralized anti-Trump protest movement began in part on Reddit. Established advocacy groups also began to rally outside government agencies in Washington as the so-called 'department of government efficiency' moved from agency to agency to slash programs and staff, calling attention to the cuts. Musk, the world's richest person who is cutting government programs through his Doge agency, proved a potent target for protesters, who derided the oligarchy and chanted against kings. An economic boycott of Tesla, Musk's car company, and protests at his dealerships tanked the company's revenues, showing the power of withholding dollars. Some acts of vandalism marked the boycott, leading the government to install harsh penalties for 'domestic terrorism' against the company. Protests grew in size over the next two months, with a 5 April protest dubbed 'Hands Off' drawing several million people to big cities and small towns alike. The protest served as a catch-all for anti-Trump coalitions, and messages calling for Trump to stop meddling with social programs, the courts, immigrants and trans people. In one red area in Minnesota, a newspaper columnist said 5 April was the biggest turnout she or others who attended could remember seeing. 'Politicians from this area might not change their votes or their rhetoric but they had to have taken note of the crowd size,' the Minnesota Star Tribune columnist wrote. The grassroots nature of the current protest movement is beneficial at a time when many don't think the Democratic party has a lot of credibility, said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. 'I think that actually has the potential to be more effective in the long run,' said West. 'The fact that it's ordinary people from across the country actually gives the protests more authenticity.' Elected Democrats have followed, not led, as grassroots opposition materialized, grasping the energy in the streets and starting to launch opposition movements of their own. Earlier this year, some protests targeted Democrats, asking them to unify as an opposition party. Some elected Democratic leaders said those efforts were misdirected. 'What leverage do we have?' the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, asked out loud in February. Some Democrats said they should work with Trump and Republicans when their priorities aligned. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, helped allow for the passage of a Republican spending bill, spoiling what little structural opposition the Democrats had in Congress. The missed opportunity led to ongoing calls for Schumer's resignation, which he has rejected. But other Democrats more quickly took up the resistance mantle. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have toured the states on a 'Stop Oligarchy' tour that has drawn tens of thousands of people. Other elected Democrats and the Democratic National Committee have held town halls in Republican districts, and angry constituents showed up to the few Republican town halls armed with pointed questions. 'What you want to do when you lack the ability to actually stop the madness is provide a vessel for effective outrage and, like, vibes,' Karpf said. 'Vibes aren't enough, but vibes are worth a bit. 'The thing that I like about AOC and Bernie going on tour isn't that that's going to be the turning point that changes it all, because nothing will be right now. But it allows people to come together in solidarity and feel not alone.' As crowds kept showing up to oppose the Trump administration, elected Democrats started finding ways to meet the moment. The New Jersey senator Cory Booker gave a record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor to draw attention to the harms of Trump's agenda. A group of Democrats, including the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen, went to El Salvador to call attention to the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, a man deported against court orders. Booker and Jeffries held a sit-in on the steps of the US Capitol on Sunday, inviting other elected officials to join them. 'People have complained Democrats have been too passive, and Booker very effectively made the point that he's really upset about the things that are happening, and he's willing to put himself on the line,' West said. Trump's 100-day approval ratings are the lowest in 80 years, and polls are showing growing opposition to his agenda. But the next opportunity to retake Congress isn't until 2026, and the opposition's most potent adversary, Musk, is reportedly leaving his government role soon. Protests are expected to continue and to grow, organizers say. The next collective day of protest is set for 1 May, May Day, focusing on labor and immigrants' rights. Indivisible, the progressive advocacy group formed during the first Trump administration, has seen its numbers rise considerably since Trump won again in November. Run for Something, an organization that helps progressives run for office, said in April that nearly 40,000 people had reached out to get information on how to launch a campaign since the November 2024 election. While the protests themselves might not succeed in stopping Trump's agenda, they could inspire defections from Trump supporters. Defections help movements grow and then win, said Chenoweth, of Harvard. It's not getting the most diehard Maga people to sour on Trump; it's getting people on the periphery to move one notch over and stop going with the status quo. 'One of the things that's hard for folks is to figure out how to pull apart what looks like this very monolithic extreme group,' Chenoweth said. 'And they're never as monolithic as they look. There are a lot of people in the periphery who are not as extreme as they come across.'
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Don't believe the doubters: protest still has power
Opinions about the protests this month keep oscillating between two extremes. Optimists point to the larger-than-expected numbers (larger than expected by many police departments for sure); they enthusiastically recall a famous social scientific finding according to which a non-violent mobilization of 3.5% of a population can bring down a regime. Pessimists, by contrast, see protests as largely performative. Both views are simplistic: it is true that protests almost never lead to immediate policy changes – yet they are crucial for building morale and long-term movement power. Earlier this year, observers had rushed to declare resistance 'cringe' and a form of pointless 'hyperpolitics', a 'vibe shift' (most felt by rightwing pundits, coincidentally) supposedly gave Donald Trump a clear mandate, even if he had won the election only narrowly. Meanwhile, Democrats were flailing in the face of a rapid succession of outrageous executive orders – many of which were effectively memos to underlings, rather than laws. But taken at face value, they reinforced an impression of irresistible Trumpist power. As we now know from the Crowd Counting Consortium – a joint project by Harvard University and the University of Connecticut – this sense of defeatism was always more felt at elite level rather than on the ground: already in the first weeks of Trump 2.0, there were far more protests than during the same period in the first administration. What seemed to be missing was a massive event serving as a focal point: now the more than 1,000 gatherings, with 100,000 showing up in DC alone, have provided one. The enthusiasm about large and astonishingly diverse crowds has also revived a tendency, though, to focus on what has become an almost totemic number, a kind of social science Hallmark card for protesters: according to Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, civil, non-violent resistance that mobilizes 3.5% of a population has overwhelming chances of success (whereas violent action is actually more likely to fail or be outright counterproductive). Three and a half per cent would mean 11 million people on the streets – even the Women's March, generally seen as highly successful, mobilized 'only' four or so million people. The first Earth Day event in 1970 – generally seen as the largest single-day demonstration in US history – brought out 'only' 20 million. As Chenoweth has cautioned, the 3.5% number was not some hard social scientific law, let alone a prescription. Many movements have been successful with fewer participants. Plus, what might best be described as a 'historical tendency' was measured at a time when no one was conscious of it. Things might be different if one specifically tries to mobilize in light of a 3.5% goal; conversely, power-holders might now be determined to prevent resisters reaching a particular threshold at all costs. In any case, protests and resistance are not the same: the former, by definition, accepts existing authorities and asks for change; the latter does not necessarily recognize the legitimacy of the powers that be – and it was the latter that Chenoweth and Stephan were looking at. Protest rarely leads to immediate policy change; in fact, according to the writer and activist LA Kauffman, perhaps the only clear example of a direct result is a protest that in fact did not happen. In 1941, the civil rights leader A Philip Randolph threatened Franklin D Roosevelt with a protest against racial discrimination in the defense industry and the military; before a march on Washington took place, Roosevelt conceded and issued an executive order banning discrimination in the defense industry. Yet immediate policy change is not the only metric of success. Especially in light of the defeatist elite stance earlier this year, people coming out and seeing each other can be a major morale booster. What is so often dismissed as performative – music, drums, people parading with handmade signs to have their photos taken by others – is not a matter of collective narcissism; rather, it has been recognized by many modern thinkers, starting with Rousseau, as an important part of building community. Politically inspired and inspiring festivals are not some frivolous sideshow; they allow citizens to experience each others' presence, their emotional dispositions (many are seething with anger!), and their commitment. Sign up to Fighting Back Big thinkers on what we can do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion True, it matters what happens next. Many of the protests that took place during the past decade were ultimately unsuccessful because rapid mobilization via social media had not been preceded by patient organizing and the creation of effective structures for continuous engagement. By contrast, what remains the most famous protest in US history – the 1963 March on Washington – was a capstone march after years of difficult, often outright dangerous organizing. The march was flawlessly executed and produced celebrated images; it is less well-known that it was coordinated with the Kennedy administration and very tightly controlled by civil rights leaders (only approved signs were allowed; there was an official recommendation for what lunch to bring: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). At the end of the march, participants repeated a text read out by none other than A Philip Randolph: they promised they would not 'relax until victory is won'. It matters whether those who expressed anger earlier this month can stay engaged, building on the easy connections during spontaneous encounters at a protest. Even by itself, though, what civil rights leaders called the 'the meaning of our numbers' will be not go unnoticed by politicians and, less obviously, courts hardly insensitive to public opinion. Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University
Washington Post
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Heard the resistance was dead? You've been reading too much.
Amy Hollyfield is the managing editor of the Dallas Morning News — the very honest managing editor of the Dallas Morning News. When confronted earlier this month as to why her newspaper hadn't covered Dallas's version of the nationwide 'Hands Off' protests on April 5, Hollyfield admitted that 'we didn't realize the protest was going on.' She acknowledged it was 'a large event' and called the oversight 'a big miss' for her newspaper. Your average managing editor might have spun up a story about scarce resources or coverage priorities. But Hollyfield's candor opens the door for a broader question about the Trump resistance: Does the media know what it's up to? I have some doubts. 'Resistance' is a catchall term that encompasses all manner of opposition to President Donald Trump. If you're looking for anecdotage to shore up the claim that this cohort is flailing, there's a whole coward's buffet to choose from: Too many law firms have knuckled under to Trump's threats. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) declined to fight his Republican peers in the government shutdown showdown. Reporters too often fail to puncture official propaganda at White House press briefings. Outside of the vibes realm, however, there's an outbreak of data that upends the picture of a limp Trump resistance. In a March 19 analysis in Waging Nonviolence, Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman and Soha Hammam reported that this movement is alive and generating heat. Their findings are rooted in the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut. The idea is to catalogue protests around the country, the better to reach substantiated conclusions on how much activity is taking place. In February, for example, the group counted more than 2,085 protests (supporting federal workers, LGBTQ+ rights, Palestinian self-determination, etc.) versus 937 in February 2017. 'The data that we've collected thus far is not consistent with the idea that the resistance is moribund or weak,' said Pressman, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut and a founding co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium. 'This is the most mobilized I have seen the American people in my lifetime,' said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), a veteran of two Obama presidential campaigns and Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign. The American people must have mobilized mighty quickly, considering that reports on flagging opposition have been circulating for months. 'What happened to the Trump resistance?' asked a Feb. 5 headline from the New Yorker. Compare that formulation to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's: 'What happened to 'The Resistance'?' Or to this from Barron's: 'Trump Is Back. But What Happened To The 'Resistance'?' Or to UnHerd's: 'What happened to the resistance?' More: Democrats are 'exhausted.' 'Liberals have all but stopped resisting.' They're 'dispirited' and 'humbled.' If you haven't read something about the faltering opposition movement against Trump, you're not spending enough time on the internet. According to Chenoweth, the civil rights protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 appropriately made front pages across the country. The current mobilization has not reached that level. It's still robust, yet 'you can barely find word of it in the major outlets,' said Chenoweth, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and founding co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium. The major outlets did cover the April 5 protests, though homepage and dead-tree placement of those articles drew condemnation. 'For weeks and months, I've been reading stories and analyses in major news organizations about how the public resistance to Trump is so much quieter now than in 2017,' noted veteran media critic Margaret Sullivan. 'But when the protests did happen, much of the media reaction was something between a yawn and a shrug. Or, in some outlets, a sneer.' (Emphasis is hers.) Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, a project dedicated to fighting the 'right-wing takeover of American government' and a key organizer of the April 5 protests, credits outlets such as the Guardian, the Contrarian, MeidasTouch News, USA Today's Sarah D. Wire and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow with strong protest coverage. 'It's a significant event if it shows an outpouring of public anger or discontent, no matter the outcome,' Guardian US editor Betsy Reed told me via email, adding that the paper's readers are 'intently focused on this administration and in particular on the question of whether Americans will stand up to Trump.' Levin, however, scorns most mainstream coverage of anti-Trump protests. He cited an article in The Post that ran on the day of the 'Hands Off' mobilization; it's about a woman who protested against Trump in 2017 but is now tuning out political news — a case study in how 'Democrats are struggling to match the massive 'resistance' movement that sprang up in Trump's first term,' it reads. That claim, said Levin, has 'no basis in reality.' (The Post declined to comment on the matter.) 'People are turning to noncorporate podcasts in the media space and influencers on social media because they can't trust what they read in the Washington Post or the New York Times anymore,' said Levin, who rips the papers for not having placed their April 5 protest stories on the front page. Well. The Post and the Times have produced much of the cold, factual coverage fueling the protests in the first place. Another consideration is the zone, which is flooded: In the news cycle around the April 5 protests, for instance, The Post and the Times covered: honest-to-goodness flooding in the Midwest and South, Trump's trade war, the Justice Department's move to suspend a lawyer who acknowledged a deportation mistake, concerns over Trump's cuts to health and safety agencies, a fight between New York state and the Trump administration over DEI programs in public schools, wariness in Ukraine over a minerals deal with the United States, the Trump administration's firing of aid workers assisting in Myanmar's earthquake zone, Trump's upcoming meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a cancer breakthrough being delayed by layoffs and restrictions at the NIH, the National Park Service rewriting the history of the Underground Railroad, Trump appointees defending tariff announcements, former president Barack Obama exhorting fellow Americans to resist Trump, a federal judge pondering whether to hold Trump officials in contempt of court, the impact of Trump's funding cuts on Kenya, the impact of Trump's funding cuts on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. citizens getting snared in Trump's immigration crackdown, the Trump administration rejecting a proposal for Medicare to cover weight-loss drugs, tariffs hitting Big Tech in the wallet, China deriding U.S. tariffs, Democrats eyeing congressional gains in the midterms, the Senate moving toward extending Trump's tax cuts, the Justice Department challenging a judge's order to return a mistakenly deported man, a conservative-backed group challenging the legality of Trump's tariffs, the Trump administration ordering half of national forest land open for logging, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning Russia on Ukraine, the firing of the National Security Agency's director upon the recommendation of Laura Loomer, U.S. negotiators being outmatched by their Russian counterparts in peace talks, the worldwide reaction to Trump's tariffs, more workforce cuts at the Social Security Administration, clean energy projects being canceled under the Trump administration, China's global strategy amid the Trump tariffs, Trump's attack on collective bargaining, Attorney General Pam Bondi downplaying the need to investigate the Signal fiasco, tariffs forcing Nintendo to delay preorders for its Switch 2 console, the tariff on China scuppering a TikTok deal, the IRS planning to cut 20,000 jobs, the Supreme Court allowing Trump's freeze of teacher training grants, a judge barring the NIH from limiting funding for universities and medical centers, the Senate passing Republicans' budget plan, and Trump erasing pages from the White House's official website and other government sites. And that's all in addition to coverage by The Post and the Times of the protests themselves and agility-training tips. How to triage the chaos? Scramble! 'As with any major news event, we closely monitor and make judgments on the best way to distill news to readers,' a New York Times spokesperson said in a statement. The April 5 protests, the statement continued, 'were no different and were covered fully and prominently across our platforms.' The Times presented a preview, a review, and audio and video content. Neither the Times nor its competitors are likely to duplicate the work of the Crowd Counting Consortium, which requires the labor of a research director plus five or six assistants who are forever scouring news clips, social media and other sources to build a durable record of protest activity. The group is still trying to nail down attendance at events associated with the April 5 'Hands Off' protests, though Pressman said preliminary indications refute the notion that people 'are asleep or too fearful.' According to Levin, there were more than 3 million participants in 1,300 communities across the globe. That's a lot of people eager to be interviewed. 'I wish someone would go around the country and talk to people standing in lines and ask: What makes you do this? Why aren't you cynical? What is motivating you to give up half your weekend, hours of your time, to speak out, to show up?' said Khanna.
USA Today
05-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Live updates: Anti-Trump protesters set to gather at hundreds of locations nationwide
Live updates: Anti-Trump protesters set to gather at hundreds of locations nationwide Show Caption Hide Caption Protesters oppose DOGE cuts from coast to coast Protesters across the U.S. gathered around the message that "Elon Musk has got to go." Thousands of people have pledged to gather at hundreds of locations around the country Saturday, including in every congressional district, to voice complaints about President Donald Trump's actions since taking office. The "Hands Off" protests are expected to be the largest and most numerous gatherings since Trump's second term begin. Nationwide more than 500,000 people have RSVP'd to attend one of 1,000 rallies marches or protests organized by grassroots groups. For months, large and small activist groups have held protests across the country, protesting at congressional town halls, outside federal office buildings and on street corners over the changes Trump has made since taking office in January. They've protested how Trump has rolled back protections for immigrants and transgender people and laid off tens of thousands of federal workers. Some protests have focused specifically on supporting federal employees, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, Palestinian self-determination or Ukraine, while others have demonstrated against Trump's agenda generally. The White House has dismissed the protests, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling USA TODAY this week that "protests, lawsuits, and lawfare" will not sway Trump "from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable." Across the country Hosting organizations include longstanding groups like Indivisible, Women's March, MoveOn, Working Families Power, and Public Citizen and grassroots groups like 50501 that have formed since Election Day. The Washington, D.C. event, expected to be the largest, starts at noon at the Washington Monument. Organizers said they expect it to be much bigger than the People's March that occurred the weekend before Trump's second inauguration. The protests will be livestreamed here. More than 1,200 other protests are planned across the country. Organizers said they wanted to have protests that are not only accessible for people wherever they are in the country, but also highly visible to show that opposition exists in every part of the country. 'I don't care if I'm on the record as being in the town square with three people, or 300,000 people, or 3 million people protesting it, I want to be on the record. I want the story to say that people protested this and fought it every step of the way, even if the story includes the places where we didn't win,' said Rachel O'Leary Carmona, executive director of Women's March. In February alone, more than 2,085 protests took place nationwide, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut. That's an increase from 937 protests in February 2017, the first full month of the first Trump administration. But many of the protests in the early months of Trump's first term were much larger than the nation has seen so far in 2025, and there has been less frequent media coverage of protests this year. More: 'There's a movement bubbling up': Anti-Trump protests planned nationwide Saturday MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting said the goal is to concentrate all of those protests into one day to show how many Americans oppose cuts to critical services and benefits they've earned like Medicare. "Hands Off is like hands off on all these things, not just our services and benefits, but our rights and our freedoms, all of which are being threatened right now, and we're seeing it every single day,' she said. (This is a developing story and will be updated.)
USA Today
20-03-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Activists ramp up efforts to push back against Trump
Activists ramp up efforts to push back against Trump Show Caption Hide Caption Hundreds gather in NY to protest Trump on International Women's Day Hundreds participated in a 'Unite and Resist' march protesting Trump on International Women's Day. In a blue strip of Rep. Kevin Kiley's California district, an empty chair will sit on stage when his constituents gather tonight. 'We would love to have him show but we haven't heard one word from him,' said Kathy Dotson, the event's organizer and leader of the Nevada County chapter of Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group. Dotson said there is local appetite to hear from Kiley in the county, which supported Democrat Kamala Harris with 54.4% of the vote in November's presidential election. Recently two of the congressman's staff people held an event locally and were greeted by over 400 unhappy constituents. Dotson spoke with people waiting in line. 'They were so concerned. The majority of them were seniors. They were concerned about Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and quite a few were veterans, and they were petrified that their livelihoods were going to be affected,' she said. 'People are scared. People are really, really nervous.' In just two months since Trump took office and began a sweeping effort to restructure government by firing tens of thousands of federal employees, closing entire departments and shutting local offices for agencies like Social Security, activists have ramped up their efforts as well, with lessons learned from a fight that began in Trump's first term. Protests have accelerated across the country as Trump has rolled back protections for green card holders, asylum seekers, transgender people and federal workers. In February alone, more than 2,085 protests took place nationwide, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut. That's an increase from 937 protests in February 2017, during the first full month of the first Trump administration, though many of those were much larger than America has seen so far in 2025. The White House dismissed the increasing activism. 'Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to USA TODAY. "President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers across the country who overwhelmingly re-elected him.' 'He deserves to be shamed for this' After a spate of contentious townhalls gained media attention last month, National Republican Congressional Committee leaders told House Republicans not to hold in-person meetings. Members of Congress blamed liberal provocateurs for the high pressure events. "Democrats are trying to distract voters from their abysmal approval ratings and out-of-touch records with manufactured productions organized by far-left activist groups who are funded by billionaire mega-donors. Voters see through their pathetic charade," NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement. Instead of in-person public meetings, several members of congress, including Kiley are holding virtual townhalls with prescreened questions and no chance to push back. Kiley, whose district stretches along California's eastern border from south of Death Valley to north of Lake Tahoe, did not respond to requests for comment. Local activists are changing their strategy in response to the NRCC directive: dozens of groups have scheduled meetings in the next few weeks to talk about what is happening in Washington, and how President Donald Trump's administration may change their community. Each meeting will feature an empty chair in an attempt to shame their member of Congress for not holding an in-person town hall, open to every constituent. 'Honestly, he deserves to be shamed for this. He absolutely does," Heather Meaney-Allen, who leads an Indivisible chapter in Williamsburg, Va. said of her congressman, Rep. Rob Wittman. "He is too much of a chicken to actually show up and face the people that put him in office, or even those of us who didn't vote for him ever, but he still represents us. He's still supposed to be our congressman." Williamsburg JCCC Indivisible has had a contentious relationship with Wittman since the first Trump administration. Their townhall, scheduled for March 23, will feature a cardboard cutout of the Republican and the chicken dance more commonly seen at weddings. Wittman will not attend because his staff did not organize the event, his office said. "I look forward to answering these constituents' questions during our next telephone town hall – I hope they will sign up and participate," Wittman said in a statement. Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin called the empty chair townhalls, 'Organizing 101.' 'If they show up, great, then you've succeeded in creating a town hall. But if they don't show up, then you have something to represent them, cardboard cutout, a person in a chicken suit, a live chicken on stage I've seen before, whatever it may be,' he said. More: The Donald Trump resistance is ready for when Democrats are done grieving National Indivisible organizers aren't involved in setting up the local town halls, they are just promoting the idea, he said. 'It is up to you to do," Levin said of the hundreds of Indivisible chapters across the country. "I'm not flying into any district with even my least favorite Republican member of Congress to set something up. Either folks in the district do it or it doesn't happen." Meaney-Allen, who expects more than 140 attendees next week, said participation in her group's weekly protests at the local courthouse have skyrocketed since Trump's election, with energy unlike anything she's seen in nine years of activism. 'We have a huge amount of retired military here, and they showed up. They are livid. They took an oath to our Constitution, and they are still living that oath to our Constitution. These were true Americans out there,' Meaney-Allen said. 'It's been building. It's increased every single week.' Thousands of protests For weeks, protests have taken place on small town street corners, in major cities, state Capitols and in Washington. Some have focused specifically on supporting federal workers, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, Palestinian self-determination or Ukraine, while others have demonstrated against Trump's agenda generally. Some have been led by the progressive groups like Indivisible that formed the "resistance" during Trump's first term. Others were organized by labor unions, special interest groups, fired federal workers or just frustrated Americans. Hundreds gathered outside the Stonewall Inn in New York City on Feb. 14 to protest the Park Service deletion of the word 'transgender' from its national monument website. Starting March 1 and continuing since, thousands have shown up at national parks to protest staffing cuts that have resulted in fewer services for the public. On March 13, almost 100 protesters were arrested during a sit-in at Trump Tower in downtown New York City. Organizers Jewish Voice for Peace, called for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist with a green card detained by federal immigration agents. In El Paso, on March 16, activists hung a massive upside down American flag from an overpass. Indivisible, Women's March, MoveOn and more than a dozen other national and local activism groups have teamed up for a "mass mobilization" April 5 to bring together thousands of people at hundreds of protests and marches in Washington as well as spread across nearly every state. More: Thousands travel to Washington for People's March ahead of Trump inauguration 'More people are becoming alarmed' Indivisible's local numbers are growing every day, Levin said. And each month exceeds how many people joined in the first months of Trump's first term in 2017, he said. 'More and more people are becoming alarmed,' Levin said. '... maybe it's the 17th time they've heard some story about some egregious thing Musk has done, and that 17th time was too much, and so now they're going to show up at their meeting until things start to get better. I think we're going to see more and more people get active, and I so far don't see it slowing down.' Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, chief partnerships officer at Women's March, said a flood of people are coming forward to join existing groups or create new ones. Women's March organized the mass protests in Washington and across the country the day after Trump's first inauguration where many local activists first met and formed groups. 'There was this narrative at the end of the last year that the resistance is dead and people aren't mobilizing, and that's just not what we're seeing or hearing from our base, and that's also not what we're seeing and hearing from people around the country," St. Bernard-Jacobs said. She said the key is that more people are willing to take on leadership roles in their local community and are mobilizing and organizing without relying on national groups. People aren't just showing up for a march and then going home, she said. They are looking for ways to get involved locally. 'We want people to envision mobilization going forward like Yes, show up, yes. Make your sign, yes. Put on your slogan T-shirts, and (then) think about day two and day 30 and day 100 afterwards," she said.
