Dear Mr. President, We Say No

Dear Mr. President, we say no to your power grab, and this week people are taking to the streets to protest it. Rallies, marches, town halls, and other direct actions have been increasing over the past month, and today more than a thousand protest events will take place across all 50 states. While organizers tell us the primary focus of Thursday’s May Day demonstrations is rallying against the “billionaire takeover” of the federal government, grassroots opposition is on the rise as Americans feel the ramifications of your policies.

We the people say no to executive overreach and your flagrant amassing of authority by purging thousands of civil servants so you can fill them with zero-sum loyalists or eliminate their positions entirely under the guise of efficiency. We say no to intimidation, to stonewalling court orders, and to flouting the rule of law itself when it’s not to your liking. Most fundamental of all, we say no evading checks and balances, the very foundation of how our government has operated since the Constitution you swore to uphold was first ratified. That’s not governance, it’s not making anything great, and we the people say hell no.

We must be active, smart, and resilient in how we fight back and put a stop to these abuses. That means seeing the big picture and where we’re all headed if we do not resist and speak out. We must also provide a positive vision. We’re saying no to many things the Trump administration is doing, but we are also saying yes to making life in the nation actually great.

We know well that times are hard for a huge number of Americans and that many of us feel disempowered: financially, culturally, geographically, you name it. We know, Mr. President, that you tapped into those feelings during the election — after all, who among us doesn’t want their government to be more efficient, who doesn’t want to feel safe? — and we know that you’re a consummate salesman who convinced 77 million people that your leadership was the country’s best choice even after you finished your last term as a serial-lying, insurrection-raising, Muslim-banning, family-separating, bankruptcy-filing, hush-money-paying, business-record-falsifying, classified-document-stealing, liable for sexually abusing, abortion-ban-producing, twice-impeached, election-subverting felon. That’s impressive.

So too, Mr. President, is your flood-the-zone strategy, a blitz of executive orders, announcements, and a daily assault on rights and governance meant to stun and immobilize those of us who oppose your agenda — a strategy we recognize as a page from the classic autocratic playbook that it is. Putting aside the recurrent onslaught and day-to-day chaos of the administration, the massive amount of money allowed in our politics, and even the horribly bungled implementation of so many of your policy rollouts — firing, rehiring, and keeping government workers in limbo; explosive tariff mania that’s jacking up prices, started a global trade war, and is sending the stock market zigzagging downward — let’s step back and name some of the things we oppose about the first 100 days of your second term.

We say no to defying the judiciary by selectively disregarding due process as enshrined in the Constitution, arguing that presidents have absolute powers over the executive branch that the judiciary cannot usurp, filing motions to disqualify judges, and calling for the impeachment of those ruling against your administration, all while disregarding court orders that conflict with your agenda.

We say no to chainsawing the federal workforce and dismantling large parts of the government via a so-called Department of Government Efficiency, no to your gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development and Department of Education, and no to the massive layoffs and reckless firings of essential workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Health and Human Services Department, the IRS, FEMA, AmeriCorps, and the Social Security Administration.

We say no to your shameful efforts to erase transgender identity, so often by hiding behind the fig leaf of religious freedom. We are all your administration’s constituents, Mr. President, and ostracizing any of us is an attack against all of us. From blocking new passports for trans and nonbinary Americans to trying to ban transgender people from serving in the military and from your housing trans women in male prisons to erasing trans history and public health data from government websites, we say no.

We say no to withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the landmark global initiative to address the climate crisis and reduce greenhouse gas emissions signed by every nation on Earth except Yemen, Libya, and Iran. We say no to your doubling down on fossil fuels, to rolling back fuel economy standards, and to ending requirements that big polluters disclose how much carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases they emit. We do not approve of your canceling $20 billion in climate grants, ending climate standards on household appliances, and moving to repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations.

We also say no, Mr. President, to effectively switching sides on the war in Ukraine, blaming Ukraine for starting the war, being deferential to Vladimir Putin, and allowing members of the Cabinet to spout the Russian government’s talking points. We say no to walking away from our allies and fostering an adversarial relationship with the European Union. We say no to pledging to retake the Panama Canal, no to insisting that the U.S. will acquire Greenland (which we imagine will go about as well as your endless 2016 promises that Mexico would build and pay for a wall along the southern border), and no to saying that Canada should become part of the U.S. We say no to renaming the Gulf of Mexico and proposing that the U.S. take over Gaza, displacing the entire Palestinian population of the devastated enclave and turning it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

I’ll say this for you, Mr. President. When you hate something, you really hate it. While nobody is advocating to keep violent criminal migrants in the country, many of us draw a distinction between civil removal proceedings and criminal prosecutions, and we say no to your firing immigration judges when there’s a backlog of cases. But what’s really galling is the cruelty, lawlessness, and overreach of your crackdown.

We say no to deporting anyone without due process. We say no to illegally deporting people from the United States to El Salvador (255 and counting). And we say no to your deporting anyone because of an administrative error, especially to a foreign prison notorious for its inhumane conditions, and then refusing to bring him back even when a court orders you to do so. We say no to your deporting two-, four-, and seven-year old citizens, no to your saying undocumented immigrants shouldn’t get trials, and no to insisting that your administration should be able to deport unauthorized immigrants without appearing before a judge.

We also say no to terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government, to blaming DEI for the deadly midair collision over the Potomac in January, and to withholding federal funding from states and districts with diversity programs in their public schools orders that are designed to ensure equal opportunity for all — and we say yes to equal access to jobs, housing, health care, and education for everybody.

When it comes to our nation’s health, we say no to withdrawing from the World Health Organization (again), no to gutting the National Institutes of Health to the tune of 1,300 fired workers, no to terminating employees and active research grants at the National Science Foundation, as well as your canceling $2 billion in federal research grants that include clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. These are the things that affect our lives and loved ones. So we are going to keep saying no to extensive staff reductions that include scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Environmental Protection Agency, and no to the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly discontinuing $11.4 billion in state grants used to track infectious diseases and to support mental health services, addiction treatment, and other urgent health issues.

As for institutions, we say no to your freezing, reducing, and eliminating billions of dollars in funding to an ever-widening group of universities in federal grants and contracts because you don’t like their politics. Fighting the insidiousness of antisemitism and all other forms of hate is momentous, necessary, and to be applauded, Mr. President. But bullying exceptional schools with lists of demands based on your ideology is unacceptable. We say no to detaining international students, no to sending permanent legal residents to ICE detention centers, no to entering student housing, and no to plainclothes officers physically restraining students before showing their badges, all of which have happened during your campus crackdowns. Beyond universities, we say no to your vengeful targeting of political opponents and threatening perceived enemies including law firms, news organizations, television networks, former officials, and cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center.

By coming together, being creative, fighting back against your creeping authoritarianism masquerading as American exceptionalism, and insisting on better choices and sorely lacking congressional oversight as we move forward, we the people will indeed ensure the nation’s greatness, Mr. President.

Watch us as our ranks swell and our protests grow. Listen as our chorus gets louder. Feel how our unity is spreading.

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