Seizing the narrative

WASHINGTON DC—Elon Musk’s incel clown posse has gained illegal access to our personal information, with its sponsor rejoicing as people are sentenced to illness or death around the globe. He now appears to be taking aim at health care for the poor and disabled.

This is only part of what Musk is doing in week two of the new administration. So when USAID’s main office was shut down this week, I went to have a look myself at what was going on. More about that in a minute.

Decent Americans are horrified (I won’t even pause to imagine what the rest of the world is thinking). Most people are waiting for someone to act. We’re witnessing an open attempt to destroy the institutions that do the most to protect the nation.

Writer Tom Scocca wrote this week that we are functionally in a dictatorship at this particular moment. There’s a great deal that we can and should do to resist that dynamic, and depending on what happens, its worst aspects might lay in ruins in a matter of days. But for now, I agree with him that “Donald Trump has claimed powers that systematically violate the law and the constitution, and he has delegated much of the work of carrying out his unlawful orders to the unelected Elon Musk and a group of likewise unelected subordinates.”

Even right-wing thinkers who would like to see U.S. social safety net and foreign aid programs demolished are shocked, calling what is happening a constitutional crisis. The president (along with his shadow president) has definitely installed some people with evil intentions in the District right now. But among the general public, the simple truth is that most people aren’t evil, they’re cowards. And even people who don’t necessarily approve of Trump aren’t likely to stand against these kinds of operations if it feels safer to keep their heads down, if they feel isolated and vulnerable.

So today I’ll look at what happened at USAID on Monday, and address why it’s critical for us to build communities right now, to show up and take hold of a storyline in public that will let us reestablish a democracy. I want to talk about what role elected officials might have in that, and what role the public could take.

The good news is that this is very possible. It can be done, but we have to do it ourselves immediately, today.

Representatives barred from entry

What happened Monday in D.C. was at least a beginning of public pushback. A group of U.S. representatives showed up in front of the main USAID building: Jamie Raskin, Gerry Connelly, Ilhan Omar, Johnny Oh-SHESNKI, Jim McGovern, Suhas Subramanyam, Sarah Elfreth, Eugene Vindman, Yassamin Ansari, and Don Beyer (my congressman)—as well as Senators Chris Van Hollen, Brian Schatz, and Chris Murphy. They held a press event, condemning the role Musk has taken on and the president’s disregard for the law.

They talked about the outrages underway. They talked about what’s happening with the courts in terms of fighting back. (You can watch the whole video here.)

After that, they tried to enter the building to get answers, but were turned back. They stayed to take questions from the press, and I caught up with Congressman Beyer before he left. The drama with Canadian and Mexican tariffs was unfolding as we spoke.

“You change public opinion, you’re going to change the way he acts,” Beyer said of Trump. “A good example today is the stock market went down 700 points, and he put a pause on the tariffs.”

Beyer talked about other measures but also addressed drawing public attention to the crisis, saying, “We need public opinion to say ‘This is outrageous, don’t do this.’”

Beyer made an important point. They came to bear witness to a building of the U.S. government, shut down illegally and barring elected U.S. officials from entering to do oversight for the people. Those in attendance were galvanized and had a place to gather and speak. The coverage the politicians drew allowed Americans at home to see visuals of participation, public speech, and protest against government actions.

I talked to people in the crowd, too, most of whom were former USAID employees or workers with nonprofit partners of USAID. I will likely have more of their responses in a freelance piece that will run at a later point, but they called what was happening “an atrocity,” worrying over the lives that would be affected and perhaps even ended around the world. It wasn’t just the tremendous food aid that’s provided by the U.S., but also seeds for farming and programs on everything from violence prevention to civic education.

The fable Musk was spinning about the organization was not just wrong, they said, it was the opposite of what the organization was actually doing. What helps maintain stability abroad, they argued, protects Americans at home. They lamented the lack of any understanding of soft power by Trump and Musk.

Every person spoke first about the people around the world and in the U.S. jeopardized by Musk’s actions. But they were also afraid for their own well-being. They wanted more done, they wanted answers, they wanted accountability. Many of them said that elected officials showing up felt like at least someone was acknowledging what was happening in a more substantial way than merely criticizing the president online.

Narrative matters

One way to fight back that has been lacking from leaders interested in preserving democracy for some time is a clear vision of what they’re fighting for. I have long been suspicious of simple stories, particularly in politics. Trump deploys them relentlessly. They tend to be inane. They’re often deliberately used to manipulate people, as shortcuts to actual thinking, or to provoke cheap sentiment.

But in this case, it’s a terrible weakness that those who oppose Trump and Musk haven’t established a real vision of opposition and hope, something both expansive enough to capture the imagination of different political and social demographics, yet specific enough to point to clear and common goals.

In my head, I think of that story as fighting for A MORE PERFECT UNION—the opposite of exclusionary, billionaire-run money grabs that aim to end self-government. But I’m sure someone can come up with a better slogan.

The main point is that we need something. The president’s actual policies are unpopular and will only become more so. But we are at risk of him appearing so triumphant that people will split into those who want to give up and those who want to associate with whoever seems to be winning. We have to seize this window in which we can still act and give people a stake in all this.

Establishing that narrative is something we can all help with—by demanding our elected officials lead, by leading ourselves, and by supporting each other. That is work that we are going to have to do ourselves, through local projects and independent media, and by creating stories that will get in front of people at a grass-roots level.

But large national media is currently divided into two groups. One group—the group doing actual reporting—is in chaos. Many of our most esteemed publications are in thrall to the delusion of trying to find a magic formula of reporting that will reach Trump’s followers while keeping their existing readership base. In some cases, they’re jettisoning all reporting or editorial legitimacy by censoring staff or courting Trump. At best, they’re reporting on this power grab as if it were standard electoral politics or a sporting event, because that’s what they evolved to cover.

The other group of national media outlets specifically evolved as political propaganda. Which means more than half the country is either not getting any information at all, or not getting any true information about what’s happening. Instead of seeing that nothing has effectively changed with trade on our northern and southern borders, they’ll be seeing stories about how Mexico and Canada caved to Trump, and that he’s protecting Americans from criminal immigrants.

The podcasts and shows seen by this part of the country, if they see anything, are never going to show them that Trump’s policies are the opposite of what many of them actually want when asked.

We need to find the language to share a concise, clear story and get it out in public, so that people know what’s really happening. That involves some risk, and I can’t analyze for you how risk-proof you are. But there are different levels of exposure, and different ways to interfere with the parts of Project 2025 that have been unleashed so far.

Virtue signaling is good

It’s critical for people to know that a majority of Americans don’t support Trump or Musk. People make fun of virtue signaling, of putting lawn signs out about supporting immigrants, about publicly pointing out actions helping others. And everyone knows someone who does this in an empty way—who in fact, uses this only as a front for social acceptance.

But this very dynamic is why virtue signaling is critical. Without social pressure to respect one another or to acknowledge harms done, without the expectation that people will curb their most selfish impulses and paranoid thoughts about people who are different than them, people can be more easily prodded to embrace their most destructive anti-social selves.

Democracy happens in public, and we need to enact the rituals of the rights we possess in order to maintain them. We also need to put meaning into them, so that they aren’t empty. That’s an important part of what happened Monday at USAID. It was by no means an end point, but it was a start.

It happened again later that day, when my phone rang. My Congressman had set up a robocall that appears to have gone out to all his constituents. By pushing a button, you could join the call to hear about what’s happening with the federal government. Beyer outlined actions taken by Trump and Musk. He was joined by Rob Shriver, the former Acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, who worked in OPM under both Biden and Obama.

Shriver is currently with Democracy Forward, a legal organization focused on litigation and public education for democracy and social progress. He’s working on a project called Civil Service Strong, to support and protect government workers whose performance keeps the country running and provides services to Americans.

Beyer discussed planning that took place among elected officials over the weekend and the many crises currently unfolding. Shriver addressed the strong focus on court actions for now, to keep the system as robust as possible and force it to respond. He mentioned successes happening that indicate judges are willing to go against the new administration. Then they took questions from constituents who were on the call. They offered numbers to punch on phones at home if people wanted to be added to information being sent from the Congressman’s office.

They didn’t have a fully formed strategy—they didn’t have all the answers. But it was a huge start that Beyer took most of Monday to be out in public, on camera and with constituents, expressing that what was happening was dangerous and illegal, and saying what he was doing about it, and what elected officials would collectively be doing.

We need to do this not only on the national news in the nation’s capital, but with our local representatives in our towns and communities. It won’t always be a protest—it can be as simple as a community fair. Anything that brings us together in a constructive activity in public bolsters democracy and raises awareness of our common stakes in the country. The more people we draw in, and the more people who see these events, the greater the likelihood that the actual state of our towns and cities, as well as the country, can become apparent to those who would otherwise be unaware of what’s happening.

So what happened Monday is a first step toward what we need to do. If it were enough to speak in the places we’ve always spoken, to write in the newspapers and magazines where those of us who have written about these before have written, then we wouldn’t be where we are. All this may not be the fault of the people who understand the jeopardy we’re in and want a democratic future for the country. But it’s become our problem to solve.

Under construction

You cannot build a house online. You cannot build a home out of regulations and blueprints. Someone has to go outside and line up the brick, and mortar, the wood and pipe and wires.

We need to connect in groups close to home. This is not a sentimental idea; it’s a way to assert power. We need to gather in public to make connections and assert control right now, before it becomes harder or even impossible. We need to network those small communities to larger communities.

We need to have a presence outside, to demand our representatives join us there, and that people in power show up where the threat is. We need to contemplate what would drive each of us, and what might drive other people to be part of a coalition to preserve democracy.

Because I firmly believe that if we can offer a clear narrative, it will help people actually understand what’s going on and to see just how directly they themselves are threatened.

There’s a kind of vice signaling going on—a posturing that is preemptively trying to scare the country into submission. But if we can make people fully aware of it, if we impose a social price and public accountability for going along with it, a clear majority will reject it.

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