February 25, 2025 - 7:00pm
In 2009, raucous town halls for Democratic members of Congress were a sign that Barack Obama’s “hope and change” agenda risked a public backlash. Now, it’s elected Republicans who star in viral-video town halls, as they parry complaints from an enraged crowd. Many of these complaints have focused on cuts to federal programmes as well as DOGE layoffs, and they have put some Republicans on the defensive. One Republican House member, for instance, told NBC News that he wanted to see more “compassion” from the administration going forward.
To some extent, town halls are political theatre, and progressive activists have recognised in them an opportunity to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire. But they are also part of a growing pool of evidence that the sweeping disruption of the first month of the Trump administration has started to generate some resistance. Elected in part out of dissatisfaction with the economy of the Joe Biden years, the new regime cannot afford to take its eye off kitchen-table issues.
Beyond these town halls, some polling has raised red flags. While Trump remains more popular than during his first term (as well as considerably more popular than Biden in the closing year of his presidency), his numbers have dipped a bit over the first month of his presidency. Even more importantly, approval for his economic policies has also fallen in polling. A CNN poll published last week found that 51% of Americans thought the President had gone “too far” in cutting the federal government — and 62% believed that he was not doing enough to tackle inflation. Economic anxiety can be read in other measures, too. The consumer-confidence index dropped from January to February and remains well below where it was during most of Trump’s pre-pandemic presidency.
It’s obviously too early to judge the new administration’s economic programme, or to expect its agenda to have already had a major effect on inflation. But that polling does indicate where the public’s priorities lie. The Right-wing X echo chamber might delight in battles with the “deep state”, but the majority of swing voters turned to Trump in 2024 in part because of their warm memories of the economy during his first presidency. That gives him some goodwill now that he has resumed office, but it also means that voters expect him to deliver.
Trump was partly able to take over the Republican Party almost a decade ago because of the unpopularity of the austerity agenda which had become ascendant during the Tea Party era. Voters consistently backed away from the GOP when its talk about “limited government” transformed into proposals to slash federal programmes, especially entitlements. Sweeping federal cuts today could actually revive the pains that austerity inflicted on Republican electoral prospects. If the cuts seem erratic and haphazard, public sentiment could turn quickly.
DOGE’s allies insist that the growing US debt burden needs to be confronted. However, taking America’s fiscal challenges seriously only adds to the importance of not allowing administrative battles to get in the way of a bigger economic programme. Robust, broadly shared economic growth alleviates fiscal pressures and gives policymakers credibility when proposing bigger reforms. The last time that the United States tamed its deficit and took its debt burden on a long-term downward trajectory was in the late Nineties, when the go-go economy filled federal coffers and family bank accounts. For decades, recessions have caused a spike in deficit spending.
Reasserting presidential control over administrative agencies and slashing anti-growth regulations could be the first part of a broader populist agenda to shore up working families. At a certain point, though, disruption hits diminishing returns and becomes a political liability. Fiscal sanity and Republican political fortunes may both be tied to economic renewal.
What did they expect? Trump inherited a booming economy from Obama, drove it into the ground through his lavish tax cuts for the richest Americans and his grotesque incompetence during the first year of Covid.
Biden may have received little credit for it but his administration did the hard work of turning the economy around and the pain that involved.
I suspect that many US voters are starting to realize that they may have elected an imbecile and the person actually running the government is a racist megalomaniac.
Kamala Harris must be looking pretty good to them right about now – shame that its too late for that…
Polls show the Trumpster is off to a phenomenal start. Still, he hasn’t moved to reduce income taxes yet.
Once he slashes income taxes and replaces it with the hearty 90% trust fund tax, we will be swimming in revenue.
I’m not sure that you know what the word phenomenal means.
Anyway, the true MAGA lunatics like you don’t care about facts and will blindly follow your dumbo cult leader regardless of what nonsense he spouts. Its the few in the middle that matter and when they see inflation going up, chaos in the government, services being cut willy nilly and maniacs like Dan Bongino being appointed to senior roles we’ll soon see Trump’s already squishy approval numbers tank.
Reality will eventually strike the Trump fantasy world, the shitshow is only starting, a huge market crash is coming with a slowing economy and fiscal crisis. Income tax cuts with a 2 trillion annual deficit? Good luck with that. And don’t tell me they will slash government spending and social security and Medicare amd defense spending to give more to the rich, which will cause a depression. Trump will sink like a rock. The great swindle will be exposed soon.
In the next 4 years we will have learned what NPD abuse and the shared fantasy is on a global scale.
Let’s remove the schoolground politic of Dem/Rep
This is about psychopathology and the shared fantasy – In this instance we have two unchecked, phenomenally rich/powerful guys who fit the bill of malignant NPD running the country with the safety off.
Unlike other leaders falling into the NPD bracket (Blair, Clintons, Obama, Reagan) but these two are genuinely sadistic. They don’t care about anyone, or anything, they dont even care about MAGA. The whole world is an object to play with and reality is something to be played with.
Right now they are trying to find a way to solve the crisis in the debt system where the US stopped QE and collapsed the bond market. Which is why we are seeing the state being torn up, which is why we are seeing deals in Ukraine, which is why we are seeing a pullback in global military committment.
Basel regs meant all banks had to hold a certain amount of long duration debt and They have been running false pricing on overnight swaps for 2 years now, and that only leads for every other broke bank to increase risk because like SVB, they know the gov (or Jamie Dimon as a proxy for the gov) will bail them out. (Wait? Who’s freeloading on gov time now?)
All of this is another fantasy. The US cannot keep expanding if it tariffs the rest of the world without forcing new alliances amongst nations which redeuce their dependency on the US. It cannot cut all wealfare support without creating a revolutionary reaction internally. The USA cannot project power if it pulls troops away – which then takes away the ability for the US to use it’s most powerful weapon – The Dollar. GDP Q/Q comes out tomorrow and I have bet that it spells stagflation.
Meanwhile, it cannot rebuild the gap in the demographics required to restructure taxation (especially at the lower rates they aim for) without immigration. You can’t have kids in the past.. We missed that boat 15 years ago.
Oh and back to psychopathology – not only do narcs self destruct blaming the country/family/relationship for not living up to their impossible fantasy. But they turn on each other. Elon and Trump wont be able to be in the same room at the same time after a while… MAGA will tear itself apart.
None of this feels good. Apart from feeling gobally unsafe, it actually ends up with the end of the USA as we know it. Some of you may be indifferent, but we are going to see a lot of people dying. On a global scale. Trump just opened up a multipolar world when all his voters were voting for a Unipolar one.
Some of this is true. The mistake is not recognizing that the world already broke away from Unipolarity with BRICS. Thats 55% of the world’s population.
You’re conflating a lot, Fred. Do some more research.
Red-District DOGE Protests, Cited As Proof of Broad Musk ‘Backlash,’ Were Organized By Left-Wing Groups
Yes, exactly. It’s all orchestrated and Doge is showing the receipts
Free Beacon? LOL!
Again, you people are beyond mockery! But that won’t stop me doing it anyway!
You may be the person held in lowest esteem here, but you seem too obtuse to realize it.
Given all the time evidently on your hands, no one will be surprised.
.
Have you ever looked at political contributions from different agencies, say USAID?
Does a 97% donation rate imply neutrality to you? I’m not sure how any organization could get that partisan let alone a supposedly neutral agency.
Should I as a Republican voter just assume Correlation is not Causation. Would Democrat voters assume there was no partisan bias if donations were 97% Republican?
It would be interesting to know where you’re coming from, Carlos. It’s not that nothing you say has any value. It’s just that you don’t seem to have come to terms with the mood of our side of the spectrum.
Nobody voted for Trump expecting nuance. Our exasperation over decades of the political class not stewarding the country well reached a head. We tried the diplomatic approach to no avail, so we sent a bouncer.
In other words, read the room. There’s no strategy other than full sunlight.
The DOGE fanatics remind me of the climate fanatics. Both have reasonable goals — to eliminate the federal deficit in one case and to eliminate carbon emissions in the other.
In both cases those goals are aspirational but unachievable, at least in the near term. There’s no way to cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget. There’s no way to get to net zero.
When people pursue fanatical and fantastical goals they tend to do their cause more harm than good. They often generate a backlash that stops all progress when if they had been less doctrinaire and ideological they could have achieved much of what they sought. So they get 20% of what they want instead of 80%.
What’s the answer? Give up a little to the other side. Recognize they are not evil and let them save face instead of forcing them to eat dirt. Be reasonable instead of forceful. Push but don’t shove.
Replied to your deleted post first…
Have you ever looked at political contributions from different agencies, say USAID?
Does a 97% donation rate imply neutrality to you? I’m not sure how any organization could get that partisan let alone a supposedly neutral agency.
Should I as a Republican voter just assume Correlation is not Causation. Would Democrat voters assume there was no partisan bias if donations were 97% Republican?
Every honest person knows the answer. Standard operating procedure for the Left is to push as far as they can when in power then urge the Right to be cautious when we’ve got the reins.
Right on, Mr. Bone.
97% donation rate? What are you babbling about now?!?!?
Its hard to make any sense of your “thoughts” here but are you suggesting that 97% of USAID donations went to democrats? Because that is stupid even for you!
According to Open Secrets it was 96.74% to Democrats and 3.26% to Republicans. Go ahead and check yourself. I’ll be eagerly awaiting your apology.
Do you know what USDAID is? Had you ever heard of it before Trump decided that he didn’t like it? Have you done even the most basic research about it since then?
Obviously the answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO!
Your comments make me thankful ..that at least the U.S. taxpayer dollars used to deceive the useful idiots, hasn’t gone to waste. Money well spent.
I sure do CS. Let me know if you want to have a substantive discussion.
OK. Point me to a reliable source that says that 96.74% of USAID donations went to Democrats. A link to the actual story because I looked at Open Secrets and it said nothing of the kind.
If you go to the USAID page on Open Secrets and click on Totals it has a chart of the Democrat to Republican contributions and percentages by election year dating back to 1990.
In 2006 contributions were 52% Republican. In 2008 it went to 69% Democrat. 2010 was 89% Democrat and from 2012-2024 its all over 90% Democrat.
You can’t handle the truth: They ARE evil.
That is the recipe more for the same old same old.
“town halls are political theatre, and progressive activists have recognised in them an opportunity to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire.”
This one sentence sums up the entire story. Nobody knows how to work the public meeting space like progressive activists.
Dont believe the fear porn, Europe. Nice try, trying to convince the average citizen there’s a downside to cutting the bloat. That we should feel sympathetic and that there will be some horrible backlash to cutting the corruption and the thousands of empty desks and money going to NGOs. What a joke. It’s all the same playbook, attack Trump, attack Musk, leverage the lefties, as they cling to the lies and TDS. And don’t forget how much was exposed, which shows the global/leftist/democrat funded media and all the baddies, have a big stake and billions of dollars in manipulating you to believe you want this big, fat, corrupt leftist self destruction. I have been loving unherd, but interesting not one article with specifics about what’s actually exposed. They think you are so stupid.
Here’s the website, if you care to look and not put your faith in the media at all. Sadly, that seems to include unherd. I think we all know how the baddies behave when we are over the target. Fear, smears and gaslighting.
https://www.doge.gov/
Is this the website that claimed an $8BN savings when it was actually $8M?
Yeah, these guys are right on top of things! Honestly, even I am sometimes surprised at how gullible you hicks are!
You’d be one of the lefties they leverage. Well played.
Another headline question were the answer is no.
Sometimes its not even worth mocking you people…
I know how you feel
I was on about CS
Haha yes, they do that a lot, especially with the DOGE topic.
Nope. You need to a better job of following the money Fred. The noise at the townhalls is from Soros backed, USAID funded (previously) progressive activists. Plenty of real journalist sources for that.
No doubt you can supply some of these real journalist sources for this insane claim?
(This is where he says he isn’t going to do my homework for me and then scuttles away with his tail between his legs – just watch!)
Let me help. Check out this and the references in it…
https://freebeacon.com/media/mainstream-media-outlets-cited-red-district-doge-protests-as-proof-of-broad-musk-backlash-soros-funded-liberal-groups-organized-them/
…well at least its my own tail down there and not some woke ideolog’s tongue as with your carcass Chamsoc. Check out the Washington Beacon for relevant video content,
And guess who were the major financial supports of the right-wing tea party protest during the Obama era: the billionaire Koch Brothers and their org “Americans for Prosperity” So it seems both sides have their billionaire supporters. And each side tries to use that fact to invalidate the actions / arguments of their opponents, claiming that the protesters were bought and paid for. Is it really hard that hard to believe that people have genuine anger that wasn’t paid for by a billionaire. One of my brothers hated Obama but he ever received any $ from Koch while my sister despises Trump and Musk. She hasn’t received a dime from Soros. But go ahead hate on people who are probably more like you than you imagine.
There’s no hate at this end Nick. But as others are pointing out, the only mode Progessives are actually capable of operating in is political Kabuki theatre. In their safe spaces within the bureaucracy/academy/media complex they have been incompetent self dealing, failures. And now Trump is stripping off their masks, and ripping up their fantasy scripts. Everybody will be better off as a result, including the newly maskless, who must now embrace the actual human condition that life is not a movie read-through.
The problem with what DOGE is doing is that increasing efficiency seems to be a benefit but it usually is not. Taking out the slack in a complex system usually doesn’t make it work better, it makes it work worse.
Take the food distribution system. People can see that there’s a lot of wasted food and they think that’s a problem that’s easy to solve. But it’s not. It’s really, really hard not to waste food. Try too hard, and some people will starve.
My sense is that about 20% slack in a complex system is about right. So that’s about 80% efficiency. Beyond that, you probably make the system more brittle and fragile and that offsets any sayings from efficiency.
Take Elon Musk’s Twitter as an example. Elon Musk went in and cut 75% of his staff yet the company still operates about the same as it did. A success, right? Sure, unless you look at the value of the company now compared to when he bought it. On that metric it’s about as big a failure as it could be.
But company was never worth what Musk paid for it.
He knew it and tried to back out of a deal but sale deal was so tight that he could not.
So congrats to lawyers on the sale side.
His decision to fire woke parasites from Twitter was a right one.
Obviously you are in denial about censorship on Twitter under old management.
Just follow Twitter Files to find out.
In many regards it is far too early to conclude Trump already in serious trouble, but the chainsaw was always going to hit some of his constituency. And he won no landslide. Doesn’t take much to peel away sufficient to lose the House entirely in 20mths. Having a Billionaire in the White House and the World’s richest man cutting programmes whilst his companies acquire further Federal contracts (see Starlink and the FAA) an increasing gift to opponents. Yes absolutely an elite controls power – a real Estate & Tech Bro Billionaire elite. A great Betrayal. You can it in lights already.
And this is before the real fight in the House for his Reconciliation Bill. Here his prioritisation of tax cuts for the v rich will receive further spotlight juxtaposed with an increase in national debt and cuts to programmes that just may support many in need.
The WWF smack-down distraction twaddle will only get you so far.
I actually got a tax cut in 2017 too. Helped a ton. You may want to modify your “tax cuts for the rich theory” when many working class people significantly benefit.
He promised alot of tax cuts in his 2024 campaign. Remember the one on tips? Now watch carefully which one’s he prioritises in his Reconciliation Bill. You can be sure that relating to the top 0.1% will be prioritised. As the US treasury published itself a continuation of that gives the top percent £360k a year benefit. The ‘little guy’ gonna get screwed and you know it.
I care about my family. Is my disposable income going to increase or decrease?
Depends where you are on the strata TB, how secure your employment, type of industry you work in, your age, your asset owning situ, and your health status. Things could already be loaded in your favour. But for many things are not loaded in their favour.
And as you know if inflation ahead of wage growth…
Inflation always hits the poorest more. Who’s paying the cost of tariffs?
I sense though you may put much stock in your personal position in coming to judgment. Of course many will do that. But society relies on us also appreciating better what it like for many others less fortunate.
It was quite a feat to write this article but not mention the Harvard Harris poll from Monday that showed a 76% approval for DOGE among the public. In fact almost all of Trump’s flagship policies (deportations and wall, men in wome’s sport, ending race-based hiring practices, ending drilling bans, cutting foreign aid, tariffs) had majority support.
Indeed.
Modern Washington DC has almost never been forced to weather an economic downturn (such as a recession) and in the rare cases that it has, it bounces back faster than other areas. Because the government always finds a way to not only fund itself but also to grow – even if this means accruing $36 trillion in debt and an additional $2 trillion in accumulating yearly loans that our children’s children will have to pay back.
Individual stories of government layoffs may be sad, but this doesn’t mean that the layoffs aren’t necessary. The alternative is so much worse.
The American people understand this, and they overwhelmingly support this once-in-many-lifetimes chance to start getting America’s financial books in order.
The town halls are more than political theater- they’re pure astroturf.
See recent polls- from a left-leaning pollster.
Discussions of economic politics still make the assumption that the voters are like isolated self-interest robots, only concerned with their own finances.
But other issues pertain. Just in the first month so many people have been fired or threatened with firing, in NGO jobs as well as Federal jobs, that many voters see their friends and neighbors suffering. And now the talk in the news has turned to programs that hundreds of thousands of people depend on.
If the richest man in the world told me I didn’t need food stamps or public schools for my kids I would certainly be angry. Mr. Trump would do well to brush back DOGE before he makes too many new enemies. He still needs those voters to get him through the all-important mid-term elections.
The indiscriminate firings touch everyone in the US. It’s particularly annoying that the firings have concentrated on probationary workers, who are young persons mostly. Many parents are very concerned about their fledglings and independence. So, now that they have a decent job, that f*****g asshole Musk comes along and fires them WITHOUT CAUSE. Many of them already have had good or excellent reviews. It’s just a bitter pill, and is destroying Trump’s support.
Most of this jobs in NGOs are bullshit jobs for useless woke parasites.
Now they can go and find jobs in real economy.
But no one want wasters with degrees in gender studies.
Idea that this people would ever vote for Trump in for the birds.
It is the same in uk. Previous “Conservative”, ha, ha, government should had fired hundreds of thousands of uncivil service and NHS parasites but it never did.
Mr. Bauer, do you really believe what you just wrote? In every poll, and I don’t care for polls, there is over 60 % support for auditing and restructuring the Feds. I can only assume that you are aware of this support so I have determined that you are nothing but a hack shill. No real discussion, just the “talking points” of the folks who have been eating at the trough for far too long.
I am a registered Democrat, and I support Doge 98%. I have been screwed by the unaccountable bureaucracy for my entire life – just like the Trump voters have. You knew the haters were gonna hate, right? A third of you knew it and were twitching to echo the poorly informed “backlash” BS.
It’s been a MONTH, b*tches! Wait until something real happens before you crap your guts out.
These are lefties prtending to be Republicans at these ersatz town halls.