The Trade War Officially Begins Today

By the time you read this, the wild and crazy tariffs announced by Donald Trump will have officially kicked in. It's no longer just a threat, it's for real.

Because the Trump who cried wolf has already backed down on tariff threats three times in less than 2 months, many folks on Wall Street were betting that the President was just playing a big game of chicken, and that he would somehow blink. When it was clear that there would be no blinking, the markets sank yet again. Yesterday, the Dow Jones was down 320.01 points (0.84%), the S&P 500 was down 79.48 points (1.57%), and the Nasdaq was down 335.35 points (2.15%).

In fact, not only did Trump not back down, if anything, he doubled down. At least, he did when it comes to China. During the day, he announced additional tariffs on that nation, with the result that, as of today, imports from China will have a 104% tariff. In the evening, he gave a speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee and boasted about his "war on the world" and that "They ripped us off left and right. But now it's our turn to do the ripping."

It is hard for us to understand where that 104% figure comes from. We've plugged the numbers into our own tariff-calculating equation, as shown below:

According to our figures, the correct tariff rate for China is actually a billion skillion percent. What are these people in the White House doing, setting it at only 104%?

In all seriousness, trade policy is hardly our bailiwick. However, we do know enough to know that Chinese president Xi Jinping is a long-term thinker who does not need a quick "win" and that he helms a nation that finds itself with a much larger number of very interested trade partners than was the case, oh, say, 24 hours ago. Meanwhile, Trump is approaching this like it's a real estate negotiation, and one with the owners of Ma and Pa's Country Kitchen and Budget Motel. Even without much in the way of expertise, we have a pretty good idea of which approach is more likely to pay dividends.

The other problem, beyond Trump's approach to negotiation, is that it's still not entirely clear what the heck he wants, exactly. Senate Republicans are pushing hard for answers as to what the endgame is here. Other nations, even the ones that are home to many white people, can't get Trump or one of his people on the phone, to begin even preliminary negotiations.

Who knows when we will learn something beyond "It's war against the world"? Maybe today, if the stock market really freaks out in response to the tariffs actually being in effect. Trump is also scheduled to meet with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni next Thursday, with the idea that she'll act as a middlewoman between the U.S. and the E.U., presumably because she speaks fluent Fascist. So, maybe we'll gain some clarity then. Your guess is probably about as good as that of anyone in the White House. (Z)

Legal News: Trump Wins in One Court, Loses in Another

Yesterday, barring a successful appeal from the White House, the Associated Press won its lawsuit against the Trump administration. Recall that the AP had been barred from most executive branch press availabilities because it refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Remarkably, the ruling came from Judge Trevor McFadden, who is one of the Trumpiest judges in the land. He wrote: "Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less." Who knew McFadden was in class the day they taught freedom of the press?

The McFadden decision was a pretty big poke in the eye for Trump, and if the administration can't get a favorable ruling from THAT judge, of all people, it would be well advised to drop the matter. On the other hand, the White House did get another win courtesy of the Supreme Court yesterday. The Trump administration fired about 16,000 probationary employees, a federal judge issued an injunction that said the government had to rehire the 16,000 people while the court case played out, and SCOTUS canceled the injunction yesterday.

What this means is that these 16,000 workers will remain fired until there is a final decision on the case, whenever that might come down, from the federal court in California that is adjudicating the matter. They may or may not win. Even if they do win, they will go some period of time without a paycheck, and that money is not likely to be restored to them, even if they do win. So, a lot of these people are going to move on to other jobs, and won't be back, even if their case is successful. So, a win that is ostensibly temporary will be a permanent win, even if the administration ultimately loses the case.

And as long as we're on the subject of SCOTUS, let us add a few points to our report from yesterday, about the poor folks who have been forcibly deported to El Salvador without benefit of trial. We already pointed out that it's very problematic (and very cowardly) how frequently and how aggressively the Roberts Court uses the shadow docket. On top of that, however, the decision that the 5-4 majority made on Monday absolutely cut Judge James Boasberg off at the knees, effectively saying to the Trump administration "Feel free to disregard the rulings of lower-court judges, and to treat those judges like they are irrelevant." Not very consistent with Roberts' claims that he wants all levels to the federal judiciary to be treated with respect.

We also should have added that the 5-4 decision is a clear-cut case of the justices standing on their heads to produce the result they wanted. Recall, the Court decreed unanimously that people could not be arrested and deported without due process. However, in the 5-4 ruling, the majority decreed that "due process" means "you have to file a habeas corpus petition where you were detained" (in this case, Texas). Not only does that decree put the petitioners before a court that is likely to be hostile, but it also rather aggressively reinvents the meaning of "habeas corpus petition." A successful habeas corpus filing is asking for the petitioner to be released from the custody of the U.S. government. It is NOT asking for the government to keep someone in the U.S. rather than being sent to a foreign prison. That this ruling is a gross abuse against the meaning of "habeas corpus petition" was the main point raised in the dissent written by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which was joined in full by Associate Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, and in part by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

John Roberts is pretty inscrutable, and you can never be sure what he will say or do. However, the early returns do not give one hope that he plans to be a firewall against the worst excesses of the Trump administration. On the other hand, Barrett is a devout Catholic and may actually pay attention when her priest gives sermons about poor people and justice. (Z)

Gaslighting, Part I: Immigration

During his campaign, since his reelection, and since his inauguration, Donald Trump has made many claims about what policies he's planning to pursue, and why. The problem is that the administration's actions are often so far removed from the rhetoric as to make his promises laughable. There were numerous examples of that in the last 24 hours alone.

For example, Trump has (clumsily) enunciated a plan to reduce undocumented immigration to the United States. The stated purpose, which varies from speech to speech, is sometimes combating crime, sometimes combating fentanyl smuggling, sometimes preserving jobs for American workers, and sometimes... hey, look over there!

Yesterday, the White House executed the latest, and broadest, version of a trick it has now used several times, mass-revoking the residency status of people who were in the country legally. The newest targets are roughly 985,000 folks who came to the U.S. using the Biden-era CBP One app.

The basic thinking behind CBP One was that people are going to try to come to the United States, whether the government likes it or not. And so, the Biden administration offered something of a trade: Immigrants could come and make an appointment at the border, and were often given temporary work authorization. So, the immigrants avoided the risks that come with trying to enter the U.S. illegally, while employers get quality employees for jobs that otherwise were tough to fill. Seems like a pretty good example of taking lemons and making lemonade to us.

By unilaterally announcing that the CBP One entrants must now self-deport (and the app has been renamed "CBP Home"), the administration is going after the absolute lowest-hanging fruit. These 985,000 individuals are easy to find, since they are not in the U.S. "off the books." And they tend to be very law-abiding, which is why they pursued this legal avenue that was made available to them. Many, perhaps most of them, are likely to leave voluntarily.

This new "approach" has nothing to do with the stated goals of Trump's anti-immigration platform. These 985,000 people are not committing crimes (because they want to stay), and they certainly aren't smuggling fentanyl. They are also, on the whole, NOT taking jobs from native-born Americans. With only a few exceptions, it makes no sense for an employer to import a new employee from abroad (who probably does not speak much English), unless that employer simply can't find people domestically.

The real motivation here could not be more plain. The Trump administration, despite its promises to the contrary, has not been able to increase the number of deportations per month, as compared to the Biden administration. By going after easy targets—targets much, much, much easier than actual gang members and/or drug smugglers—the White House can goose the numbers and can claim "victory." This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with making life better for the average American. (Z)

Gaslighting, Part II: Taxes

Perhaps you've heard about an agency called the Department of Government Efficiency, led by an enterprising up-and-comer named Elon Musk. Ostensibly, the reason that DOGE is taking a hatchet to anything and everything is to "save money" and "balance the budget." This is particularly the justification offered for the arbitrary terminations of hundreds of thousands of federal employees.

Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that the chaos at the IRS, most importantly the termination of more than 20,000 staffers, is going to hit the government's bottom line hard. The best guess is that, in a world where there is much less enforcement, and much less potential for a return to be reviewed closely, income tax revenue will drop by 10% this year. That works out to around $500 billion, which is vastly more than all of the people terminated by DOGE earn in salary and benefits, and is certainly more than the 20,000 IRS staffers earn. In case you are wondering, the loss to the government works out to about $25 million per IRS staffer that has been cashiered. We may need to put the staff researcher on the job, but we're pretty sure the average IRS employee does not take home $25 million per annum.

And there is more. The IRS isn't the only agency that enforces tax law. The Department of Justice does, too, through its Tax Division. Or, at least, that's what used to happen. The DoJ's tax division was created by statute, so the Co-Presidents cannot legally eliminate it by fiat (admittedly, not always an obstacle for this administration). What they have done is slash the agency to the bone, so that it has no real power to do anything. The administration is hoping that the division will just wither and die, but either way, it's not going to be forcing millionaires and billionaires to pay up anytime soon (if ever again).

And there's more still. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have made a deal that IRS tax data will be shared with ICE, so that ICE can use that information to go after undocumented immigrants. This is a gross enough breach of law and ethics that acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause resigned rather than be a part of it.

This action is doubly hollow. As with the CBP One folks (see above), using tax records to go after people is a case of pursuing low-hanging fruit. If they are actually following the rules, and paying taxes, then they are pretty much by definition not criminals/lawbreakers/drug smugglers. So, this has nothing to do with making the American people safer. Further, targeting these folks and booting them out of the country will not only deprive the government of the taxes that they are paying, it will strongly encourage anyone whose citizenship status is anything less than ironclad to engage in tax evasion. After all, why would you freely give this administration your details, especially when there's nobody left to enforce the tax rules anyhow?

We have never believed, for one minute, that Donald Trump and his underlings are actually interested in improving the government's balance sheet. That's 100% pure unfettered bull**it. We may not grasp the full agenda, but a big part of it is freeing rich people from paying taxes, and another big part of it is keeping businesses from being scrutinized when they do shady things. The THREE DIFFERENT STORIES from a single 24-hour period all serve to make this as clear as it could be. (Z)

Gaslighting, Part III: Coal

Another claim that Donald Trump has made (and sold, with reasonable effectiveness) is that he will be the savior of all those coal-mining folks in places like West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Many thousands of people saw dad, and granddad, and maybe great-granddad live a fairly stable, middle-class lifestyle as a coal miner, and they want the same for themselves in the year 2025.

Consequently, Trump issued four executive orders on coal and energy production yesterday, most notably one with the title "Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241." That title alone gives you a pretty good sense as to the President's "plan," and how little it has to do with the real world.

The XOs cover a fair bit of territory, but there are a few main thrusts. First, Trump wants future data centers, which are going to be very energy-intensive, to use coal to generate power. He doesn't really have much power to insist on this, so it's more of a "helpful" suggestion. Second, Trump wants Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to reclassify coal as a mineral, because that will subject coal to fewer regulations and will also open up funding for various forms of research into more aggressive use of coal. Third, Trump wants Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and the leaders of other agencies to reduce the regulatory barriers to new coal-production capacity.

Trump's basic framing here is that this is a battle between "real Americans," for lack of a better term, and mamby-pamby pinko-commie-liberal tree huggers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Hence his (completely false) claims that coal is "clean" and, in his press conference, that it's the cleanest form of energy known to man. In truth, it is the dirtiest source of energy in common use.

In any case, Trump is right that environmentalism is one of the factors that has led to the decline of coal production and use. However, it's not the most important factor, not by a longshot. The real problem is that other forms of energy, these days, are more profitable. Coal plants are very expensive to build; things like solar farms and wind farms and natural gas processing facilities are cheaper and more productive. Add on top of that the fact that any kind of energy production operation takes years to plan and build, and that no company wants to gamble tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars on a type of fuel that is not only less profitable, but that could be strongly disfavored once the Democrats retake the White House. For these reasons, no major new coal plant has been constructed in the U.S. in the last decade.

When Trump pumps out junk like this, it's sometimes hard for us to figure out if he's ignorant and/or stupid, or if he's just being disingenuous. In this case, however, the answer is pretty clear. Trump tried something very much like this during his first term, and it failed then, for the exact reasons we outline above. Nothing has changed since 2018 to make coal more viable. In fact, it is even less so than it was 7 years ago.

What actually has to happen, bitter a pill as it may be, is that communities that have been coal-mining centers since the days of Andrew Carnegie have to accept that coal is not coming back, that good-paying coal jobs are therefore not coming back, and that these coal-mining towns need to pivot. Some of those communities have done so, and if Trump actually wants to help the remainder, he should be looking for strategies to help encourage them to also take a new direction. But when Trump fuels their fantasies that we can get out the time machine and go back to 1955, it makes clear that his goal isn't to actually help improve these folks' lives, it's to get some cheap headlines, and to claim that he "did something" before he moves on to the next stunt. (Z)

Election News: One in, One out, One All About

Election Day 2026 is a mere 575 days away, which means it's high time for candidates to poop or get off the pot. It's hard to believe that there really was a time in U.S. history that even presidential races lasted only 4-5 months, tops.

Yesterday, Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) made official what he strongly signaled last week, and announced that he would run for the U.S. Senate seat that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is planning to defend next year. He does not appear to have the usual campaign video, though you can just watch Birth of a Nation and you'll get a pretty good idea.

With his litany of stunts, grandstanding, and sucking up to Donald Trump, this is a moment that Paxton has been working toward for years. He is the exact kind of candidate that gives people like NRSC chair Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) indigestion, in that Paxton is a much stronger primary candidate than he is a general election candidate. Texas Republicans skew pretty heavily MAGA, and so the two primary-race polls that have been produced this year (note: both from Republican firms) have Paxton well ahead of the not-very-Trumpy Cornyn, by 8 points (42%-34%) and by 11 points (38%-27%).

The problem for the GOP is that if Paxton does knock off the incumbent—an unusual, but not unheard of, outcome—he is a showboating sleazeball for whom cruelty is the point. It is difficult to imagine there is any meaningful number of Democratic votes for Paxton; they hate him. Independent voters (real independents, not independents-in-name-only) are not likely to feel much more warmly toward the AG. And many never Trump Republicans might well cast their votes for a Democrat to block Paxton, assuming that Democrat is fairly middle-of-the-road, and is not an outspoken advocate of gun control. Colin Allred, who challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last year, has not jumped in yet, but he hasn't given the Full Sherman, either. Now that Paxton is in, Allred may well take the plunge.

Meanwhile, over a thousand miles to the north, the NRSC got a different kind of bad news when Chris Sununu DID give the Full Sherman, and said he will not be running for the U.S. Senate seat that will be open due to the retirement of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). The former governor explained that he feels he can do more good in the private sector, which usually means one or more of these things: (1) the person wants to collect some fat sitting-on-corporate-boards salaries, after getting by on a public servant's salary for so many years; (2) the person wants to collect some fat lobbying fees, after getting by on a public servant's salary for so many years; (3) the person has some cause or job that is near and dear to their heart, and they want to follow their passion and/or (4) the person is keeping their powder dry for some other election, like the 2028 presidential election.

Sununu's decision leaves the Republicans with a list of potential candidates who do not inspire confidence, and who nearly all have carpetbagger problems. Scott Brown stole a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts in the special election occasioned by the death of Ted Kennedy. Lily Tang Williams is a perennial candidate, and most of her bids for office came in Colorado... as a Libertarian. Corey Lewandowski is rather more Trumpy than most New Hampshire Republicans, and is much more closely identified with Massachusetts than with the Granite State. All of these folks were in a holding pattern while waiting for Sununu to decide; presumably one or more of them will strike while the iron is hot, and jump in very soon. The Democrat in the race is likely to be Rep. Chris Pappas, who may well avoid a primary challenge. Against Sununu, Pappas would have been an underdog. Against any other Republican, he'll be the favorite. Against Lewandowski, he'd be a pretty heavy favorite.

There is one footnote here. If Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) decides to give up a near-certain reelection for an even shot at becoming a senator again, she would be a serious candidate, but probably not even the favorite and would allow a Democrat to become governor. With Sununu out, she has plenty to think about. (Z)

DCCC Announces Target List

DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene (D-WA) previously announced the DCCC's list of frontline members, that is, endangered House Democrats who will get extra help defending their seats in 2026. Now she has also announced her target list, that is, the Republicans who she thinks are most vulnerable. Here is the list sorted on how close the 2024 House election was. Any incumbent who won by less than 4 points last time will probably drown in a blue wave. Here is the list of targets.

Incumbent	District	PVI	2024 Margin	Median income
Mariannette Miller-Meeks	IA-01	R+4	0.2%	$61,500
Gabe Evans	CO-08	EVEN	0.8%	$92,100
Ryan MacKenzie	PA-07	R+1	1.0%	$69,100
Scott Perry	PA-10	R+3	1.2%	$67,200
Rob Bresnahan	PA-08	R+4	1.6%	$56,100
Don Bacon	NE-02	D+3	1.8%	$71,300
Nick Begich	AK-AL	R+6	2.0%	$75,500
Juan Ciscomani	AZ-06	EVEN	2.5%	$76,600
Derrick Van Orden	WI-03	R+3	2.8%	$59,400
Zach Nunn	IA-03	R+2	2.8%	$67,700
Ken Calvert	CA-41	R+2	3.4%	$70,000
Tom Barrett	MI-07	EVEN	3.7%	$61,400
David Schweikert	AZ-01	R+1	3.8%	$56,100
Jen Kiggans	VA-02	EVEN	3.9%	$74,700
Thomas Kean Jr.	NJ-07	EVEN	5.4%	$115,600
John James	MI-10	R+3	6.1%	$67,500
Mike Lawler	NY-17	D+1	6.4%	$108,400
David Valadao	CA-22	R+1	6.8%	$66,500
Eli Crane	AZ-02	R+7	9.0%	$54,800
Anna Paulina Luna	FL-13	R+5	9.6%	$56,600
Bryan Steil	WI-01	R+2	10.3%	$68,700
Young Kim	CA-40	R+1	10.6%	$51,800
Bill Huizenga	MI-04	R+3	11.8%	$54,200
Ann Wagner	MO-02	R+4	12.0%	$88,700
Brian Fitzpatrick	PA-01	D+1	12.8%	$93,500
Rob Wittman	VA-01	R+3	12.8%	$90,200
Cory Mills	FL-07	R+5	13.0%	$66,800
Mike Carey	OH-15	R+4	13.0%	$69,800
Monica De La Cruz	TX-15	R+7	14.2%	$48,100
Max Miller	OH-07	R+5	15.0%	$57,900
Ashley Hinson	IA-02	R+4	15.5%	$59,500
Andy Ogles	TN-05	R+8	17.4%	$63,300
Mike Turner	OH-10	R+3	18.4%	$56,600
Maria Elvira Salazar	FL-27	R+6	20.8%	$60,400
Andy Barr	KY-06	R+7	26.0%	$55,600

The last column is the median household income for the 117th Congress. It is slightly out of date, but numbers like these don't change much in a few years. NJ-07 is still a lot richer than CA-40. The median household income for all 435 districts is $63,600. About half the targeted districts are below that and half are above it. This matters because issues that work in wealthy districts (like the SALT cap) don't work in poor districts, and vice versa. Also, in midterms, turnout is generally higher among affluent, well-educated voters than among low-propensity voters. This suggests that the wealthy districts may be easier to flip than the poor ones.

DelBene has run the DCCC before and knows her stuff. She no doubt took into account many factors, not the least of which was the exceedingly good performance of the two Democrats in the Florida special elections. This suggests that even incumbents in fairly red districts could be beatable if there is a blue wave.

Also playing a role of course is the PVI. Anything R+8 or bluer might flip in a wave. All of the districts in the hit list are R+8 or bluer. Interestingly enough, there are 10 Republican incumbents in districts that are R+5 or less red that are not targeted. These are Michael Baumgartner (WA-05, R+5), Aaron Bean (FL-04, R+5), Jeff Crank (CO-05, R+5), Chuck Edwards (NC-11, R+5), Jeff Hurd (CO-03, R+5), Kevin Kiley (CA-03, R+2), Nick LaLota (NY-01, R+4), Laurel Lee (FL-15, R+5), Jeff Van Drew (NJ-02, R+5), and Ryan Zinke (MT-01, R+5). DelBene didn't explain why they didn't make the list. It could be the incumbents greatly outperformed their district's PVI in 2024, they are incredibly good fundraisers, the district's demographics are wrong for the Democrats, or something else that makes them especially strong. There are 35 offensive targets and 26 seats to defend and a finite amount of money, so not every potential district can be a battleground. (V)

Hands Off, Part III: Small Towns

We've now been able to read through and sort the many Hands Off reports we got. Yesterday, we focused on swing states. Today, we're going to highlight reports from small/smallish municipalities:

P.W. in Springwater, NY, writes: Of course the bigger cities of New York had protests, but in my little (red) neck of the woods, there were protests galore! Within 35 miles of my house, there were four—three in Livingston County alone. Each was about an hour long and I was able to participate in two.

It was raining in Livonia at 10, but everyone was peaceful and cheerful. Like the other protests nationwide, there were a variety of signs, many with American flags attached. We lined the street corners, taking care not to block local businesses, which many of us also patronized. Most of the cars passing by waved, gave us thumbs up, and honked their horns. After about a half hour, a convoy of approximately 16 trucks and cars, decorated with Trump decals and/or American flags, came through, went around the block, and returned for a second pass. One of the drivers yelled, "Long live the king."

The Geneseo protest was a hybrid; about 1/2 of us marched down each side of Main Street. Police officers graciously stopped traffic so we could cross. Other protesters rallied at the village square. Some of the counter-protesters from the morning showed up. At one point, the guy in this truck (picture below) got out of the truck while waiting for us to cross and danced in the street. He was pretty much ignored. On his second pass, he was stopped again and yelled at us. I couldn't hear him above the chanting of the marchers, but was told he'd asked if we knew how silly we looked. He should have looked in a mirror while practicing his "dance" moves.

The attendance (approximately 200-250 people each) seemed huge for these small towns. Although I recognized some faces from the morning protest, the majority of protesters in the afternoon were new. We heard that someone had said we were being paid to attend by left-wing groups and we laughed about where we should go to collect. (I'm still waiting to be paid.)

A small convoy vs. 250 protesters in an overwhelmingly red county? I think we won the day.

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L.L. in Seymour, CT, writes: From a rally in tiny Newtown, CT (one of about 10 rallies throughout the state). We had almost 1,000 people there.

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D.L. in Boston, MA, writes: The Hands Off protest in Plymouth, MA, had a great turnout. After months of pent-up frustration, I found the event more cathartic than I had anticipated. The attached image includes the monument to Plymouth Rock:

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J.H. in Lodi, NY, writes: A rally in Ovid, NY, of close to 200 people. Small? Ovid's population is 2,847 (2020 Census) and is in rural NY District 24, where Rep. Claudia Tenney (R), avid Trumpist, chose to run two election cycles ago because it would be an easier district for her to win than the district she lives in.

(Photo credit to Jan Quarrels, an organizer with Indivisible Seneca NY, who has released the photo to the public.)

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S.B. in Hood River, OR, writes: In Hood River, OR, a town of 8,000, 1,500-2,000 people showed up. Photo was published in the Columbia Gorge News.

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A.S. in Bedford, MA, writes: Even little Bedford held our own Hands Off rally on Saturday with 1,000 (!) people. I had originally planned to attend the one in Boston, but with a toddler in tow, it was easier to attend the Bedford one. I never expected protesting to be so conveniently located.

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T.F. in Craftsbury Common, VT, writes: From the predominately Republican Northeast Kingdom of Vermont:

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M.K. in Portimão, Portugal, writes: A crowd of about 125 US expats turned out in the small city of Lagos, Western Algarve, Portugal.

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S.B. in Granby, MA, writes: I wanted to write about our experience with the Hands Off protest in our small town of about 6,100 people. The weather was not friendly. We started our 2-hour stand out in a chilly drizzle, which escalated into a soaking, continuous rain by the second hour. No let up. At the peak of our stand out, our organizers counted 275 people. Given that many people came and went for whatever shorter time spans they were able to accommodate, our total participation was likely over 300 people—about 5% of the population of our town. Not bad for a town that went for Kamala Harris by only 9 votes!

The mood was great. We were at the only busy intersection in town and overwhelmingly we were greeted by waves, cheers, thumbs up, people waving their own protest signs from their cars and enthusiastic (and sometimes quite musically rhythmic) honking and tooting. There were a few birds flipped our way, a few thumbs down, but the vast majority were in our favor. We had a handful of people, driving what I think of as overcompensating-for-something type cars or pick-ups, who revved their engines aggressively or made a show of hot-dog driving tricks. One jerk deliberately swerved hard into a puddle to splash nearby protesters. My husband was one of the soaked ones. He described those types as "more testosterone than intelligence." Interestingly, all of the few dissenting reactions I saw were from men. I'm told there were a few thumbs down/middle fingers from women, but very few. I'll let you make what you will of that.

We weren't sure how parking would go, but the CVS at the intersection welcomed us to use their lot and other people with private or small business properties within walking distance also gave us the use of whatever parking spaces they could provide.

We had a few out-of-town participants. I talked to someone from Vermont who was visiting a daughter in town and came to join us even though the daughter was not actually able to attend. A couple of people came from a bigger nearby town and said they knew there would be plenty of people in their town protest, but they wanted to help out the protest in our smaller town. This is who we are.

One woman brought long-stem red roses to hand to anyone who gave us a negative reaction, but it didn't work. She couldn't get to any of them because they all drove off too fast. Make of that what you will, as well.

At one point a younger woman came running down the sidewalk. She was wearing a colorful sweatshirt reading "You know I love Lesbians." "I live up the street," she told me. "I was just driving home and I didn't know anything about this so I had to run over here and join in! Does anybody have an extra sign I can hold?" She was so excited that this was happening and so glad to stand in the freezing cold rain with people like us.

It took several hours to chase the chill out of our bones, but the warmth of being together in this shared cause will carry me for a while. We're not alone and we're not the minority.

Next time out, we'll share some reports from red states. (Z)

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