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15 Reasons for Hope in the Toughest of Weeks: GNR [1]

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Date: 2025-01-25

My friends, this has been a really tough, really awful week.

There is no sugar coating it.

Seeing that awful awful man ascend into the White House again was heartbreaking.

Reading about his executive actions was worrying.

Hearing about his pardons was infuriating.

But despite the terribleness of the week, I had moments were I was filled with hope and energy.

I know that things will be hard. I know that bad things will happen. But I also know that we will fight, and sometimes, we will win. And we can build a future that is so much better than today. Together

Here are 15 of things that gave me hope this week.

1. I see the young people getting angry

I teach college kids and I have teenagers and the last couple of years I have worried about how unengaged many of them seem from politics. Many of them had a real “both sides are awful” vibe or just disinterest.

In the last week, I have seen them wake up. My daughter, who doesn’t pay attention to this stuff much is sharing Bernie Sander’s quotes online. It is hard for me to emphasize how out of the blue that is. Honestly, my husband and I were never even Bernie people. This is amazing and wonderful.

The oligarchy and what that means is becoming real for Gen Z and they are going to grow into tremendous allies. I see it happening.

Usually these lists of mine are filled in verifiable numbers, but this one is something I am observing and feeling strongly. I feel like I am seeing something big coming towards us.

This I feel strongly: the public marrying of trump and billionaire tech bros is a major, major mistake of the right. Income inequality is a huge issue for the young and this will come back to bite them in the ass big time.

I feel strongly about that.

2. The things he is doing are unpopular

This is a big deal. It won’t remove him from office, but if we capitalize on this (which we will, because we work hard!) this will help us in all the elections in the next four years.

Trump has never had high approval ratings, in part because most of his policies are ill-thought out at best and deeply unpopular at worst. The beginning of a term is usually a honeymoon period when voters and other politicians give the president the benefit of the doubt. But that honeymoon is generally short, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that with Trump it will be even shorter. But honeymoons don’t last, and we have a lot of experience with Trump indicating that his, in particular, won’t. Trump entered his first term with slightly positive approval ratings, but a month in he was already six points underwater, and things only got worse for him from there. This wasn’t some sort of accident. Trump tends to be unpopular because he has no discipline, no knowledge of or interest in good government, and supports wildly unpopular policies. His first year in office during his first term was defined by his unpopular Muslim ban, his failed effort to repeal the ACA and strip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans, and the Unite The Right rally, when he referred to rioting neo-Nazis as “very fine people.”\ Republicans are gearing up to push more unpopular policies and create more chaos and ugly stories of human rights abuses. In the abstract, people often say that they like the idea of deporting undocumented immigrants. But when people hear stories about actual individuals Trump is likely to deport — an “undocumented community volunteer who has lived in the US for 10 years and has no criminal record,” for example, or “an undocumented person who has lived in the US for 15 years and has US-born children” — deportations garner less than 25 percent support, according to surveys by Data for Progress .

Trump Stumbles Out Of The Box, Pulling The Curtain Back From The Wizard A new Reuters poll has the new President’s job approval at there-is-no-Honeymoon 47%, lower than his vote share in the November election. Reuters writes: the poll also showed that Americans were already sour on some of his first moves. Some 58% of respondents said that Trump should not pardon all people convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. look at this chart! Not only is trump lower than he was last time (when an entire gender marched against him!) but he is WAY lower than Biden was and we all know what happened to Biden’s popularity. The TV ratings for Trump ’s inauguration were putrid. Nielsen had the inauguration at 24.59 million viewers, compared to 33.76 million for Biden’s 2021 inauguration and 30.64 million for Trump’s first in 2021. The figures combine the viewers for the 15 networks that covered it live. … Even worse for Trump and the networks who covered it were the demographics of the viewers. In the crucial under-55 demo for advertisers, only 6.1 million watched. Only a microscopic 1.43 million in the 18-34 demo. 71% of the viewers were over 55. The "find out" phase begins

Things will get worse before they get better, but hope isn’t completely lost. As we discussed yesterday, Trump’s popularity has nowhere to go but down, and the next electoral tests of strength will approach quicker than we think. In the meantime, we have to preserve what we can while trying to protect our people. We can’t prevent Trump from pardoning violent insurrectionists, gutting our pandemic preparedness (again), or implementing brutal deportation policies. But we can try to make sure that Republicans pay a political price at the next opportunity for enabling what he’s already doing to the country.

5. People are seeing that corporations won’t save us

This is related to the first point. There is a myth that billionaires and corporations will save us. They won’t. And this is exposing that truth. That is good.

The CEOs who used to trumpet their corporate social responsibility won’t be doing so this year. (BlackRock’s Fink has already expressed regret over becoming the face of ESG). JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs have departed their Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Instead, after years of calling for “responsible” global corporate capitalism, the CEOs gathering in Davos are now openly focusing on their bottom lines. In other words, the jig is up. The pretense is over. The blather about corporate social responsibility is revealed for what it really is and always has been — PR designed to make the public believe that big global corporations care about anything other than making as much money as possible, as soon as possible. I, for one, think this is a good thing. All the artifice about corporate responsibility, echoed year after year at Davos and by the Business Roundtable and in business schools, gave lawmakers who wanted one an excuse to sit on their hands, because, they’d say, big global corporations can be trusted to do what’s right. The truth is, they can’t. They never could. They won’t sacrifice shareholder returns to tackling climate change or social injustice. Anyway, these are jobs for governments responsible to the people, not for corporations responsible to shareholders. But at least we will know where the blame lies. And we will have the chance in future years — I fervently hope — to elect governments that tackle them head-on. 6. They will all turn on each other (just like last time) x This is definitely a first for me. A SENIOR official in the White House publicly declaring that the president's big announcement from the day prior is kind of a ruse — Sam Stein (@samsteindc.bsky.social) 2025-01-22T14:59:59.797Z Trump staff ‘furious’ after Musk trashes AI project Some of President Donald Trump’s key aides and allies are furious with Elon Musk for publicly trashing his $500 billion artificial intelligence mega-deal. A White House official said Musk “very much” got over his skis when the tech tycoon launched a daylong screed against the AI project. One Trump ally said Musk abused his closeness to the president. Another Republican close to the White House went further, saying Trump’s staff is “furious” over Musk using his massive social media platform to pour cold water on the infrastructure deal that Trump called “tremendous” and “monumental” just a day prior. 7. The legal system is already proving to be an ally Yes, the SCOTUS is loaded with bad actors but (a) only a tiny percentage of things get to them and (b) even they do the right thing sometimes. Biden and Schumer got more judges through than any pair EVER. And that is really going to help us. Because... Many of these policies are going straight to court. Trump's attempt to rollback a constitutional right of birthright citizenship — very unlikely to stand. Challenges will take place to Title IX order and his attempts to purge the federal government of DEI and any gender designation that's not male or female. There will be less certain challenges on his border closings. You may have already heard that his non-official "department" to reduce government waste (DOGE), led ignominiously by Elon Musk, was challenged in courts minutes after Trump took power (including by our friends at Democracy Forward). Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Plan to End Birthright Citizenship A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order to end automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil, dealing the president his first setback as he attempts to upend the nation’s immigration laws and reverse decades of precedent. In a hearing held three days after Mr. Trump issued his executive order, a Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour, sided with Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, the four states that sued, signing a restraining order that blocks Mr. Trump’s executive order for 14 days, renewable upon expiration. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” he said. “Frankly,” he continued, challenging Trump administration lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” x 💯 Tune out the nihilistic noise. Listen to actual legal experts, like the brilliant and honest Prof. @stevevladeck.bsky.social. Yes, we can defeat much of the Trump legal agenda . . . in court. We won't win every case, but we will fight and throw sand in the gears. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd1M... — Jennifer Taub (@jentaub.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T16:41:23.252Z Twenty-two States Sue to Stop Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Attorneys general from 22 states sued President Trump in two federal district courts on Tuesday to block an executive order that refuses to recognize the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants as citizens, the opening salvo in what promises to be a long legal battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Declaring a “national emergency” at the border As part of his radical agenda, Trump wants the military to build more parts of his border wall, to support operations to stop border crossings, and to station its troops at the border to “repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” as he said in his inaugural address. But to do this, Trump needs to justify the use of the U.S. military, which is not supposed to serve any domestic police function. His answer is to declare a “national emergency” at the border—even though border crossings are at a four-year low. Trump proclaimed that the current condition at the border with Mexico is an “invasion” under Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution and, using this pretense, Trump ordered the suspension of physical entry of “aliens engaged in the invasion” and for his Cabinet to “take all appropriate action to repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion.” These actions are vulnerable to legal challenge Supreme Court won’t take up new dispute over ‘Independent State Legislature’ theory The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up Montana Republicans’ efforts to revive two state election laws under a version of the so-called “independent state legislature” theory. Montana’s high court petition was backed the National Republican Senatorial Committee, 15 other Republican state attorneys general and the America First Legal Foundation. Montana Democrats urged the nation’s highest court to let the lower ruling stand, noting that the case also involved other election laws and legal arguments. 8. Doing things through executive order is the weakest way to do things

The Promise that Trump Will Come to Deeply Regret Donald Trump’s low-energy inaugural address was filled with promises. Many were vague (“The golden age of America begins right now."); others were weirdly messianic (“I was saved by God to make America great again.”); many were specific promises made on the campaign trail (“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border”). Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump began fulfilling several of those promises. He also fulfilled one significant campaign promise strategically unnamed during the speech — pardoning 1,600 January 6th rioters. But among all of the promises Trump made on his first day in office, there is one he may come to regret more than any other: I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices. Here’s why: high prices were the dominant factor in the election. The voters who switched from Biden to Trump and the folks who voted for Trump the first time are even more focused on high prices than the electorate at large. Put another way, Trump won despite, not because of, his topics during his inaugural address and what he did during his first few days in office. trump’s tariffs — not yet a thing Trump has long promised to impose high tariffs on our major trading partners including Canada, Mexico, and China. Many view his threats as mere saber-rattling to gain a better negotiating position, while others take him at his word and are preparing for the economic shock that would accompany such tariffs. On Monday, Trump reiterated his intent to impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods coming in from Canada and Mexico. Yes, this is economic madness: It will immediately raise prices on things like gas, food, and construction materials, not to mention the effect retaliatory tariffs will have on U.S. exporters. Right now, tariffs remain just a stated intent. According to Trump, when asked by a reporter directly during his executive order signing session Monday night, the new tariffs would go into effect on February 1, just 10 days from now. It’s important to note that this is a big punt. Trump had pledged during the campaign he would impose big tariffs on Day One, but for now, the tariffs are more than a week off. And a lot can happen in that week. In fact, the EO that Trump signed on Monday talks about further investigations and determinations by his advisors rather than a rush toward tariffs. 15. The Resistance will be new, strong, and united as always, the things that gives me the most hope is US. Me and you. I’ve seen what we can do. And even though people aren’t quite sure what they will do this time; and even though many people are still licking their wounds; I see a fire and determination in all of us which gives me more hope than anything else! You Are Not Alone. We've Got Your Back.

I know everyone reading this is probably having a tough time right now. I’m with you on that—it’s a truly horrible day for America. But I want you to know that you’re not alone. We’ve built a massive grassroots coalition of folks here who feel just like you do—and we’ve got your back. Here and now, you and I are on the right side of history. Where we all strive to create a better union, where everyone gets a fair shot at living their American dream. Our country will survive this. Our democracy will prevail. Because we have you, me, and our organization of independent journalists and activists. Ready to lead the charge, just like we have for the last 8 years. Let me be clear: I don’t want to talk about him ever. That’s why I didn’t even use his name in this entire post. I want nothing to do with him. But this is the reality we face. We have to push back against everything he does—and call out corporate media every time they sanewash his garbage. Mark my words: In two years, Republicans will lose Congress. And when a Democrat is sworn in as President 4 years from today, we all will have played a key role in making it happen. Onward.

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