Surviving the First Week Under Trump Rule
When the worst fraternity on campus has control of the federal government
What a decade the last week has been. I’m vacillating between rage, determination, devastation and an acute, constant worry for all the people in this country targeted by Trump’s implementation of the patriarchal, white supremacist Project 2025 agenda. It is absolutely breathtaking to see such blatant attempts to erase all of the progress we’ve made on civil rights since the 1960s, and even more astounding to see so many people blithely fall in line.
The tech bros are happily following orders to limit access to reproductive care and information, as Jessica Valenti and other outlets reported this week. Both Facebook and Instagram are targeting Aid Access, an international organization that ships birth control pills to the U.S. With Herr Elon already doing similar things at X, it’s really frighting to imagine what can happen if social media platforms continue to embrace this far-right playbook. Get your Bluesky accounts going (follow me at profemily09.bsky.social), and consider using more secure messaging platforms like Signal.
I don’t know if the answer is to boycott Meta et. al., especially if people have large networks there, like the South Carolina Women Forward group that I follow. There is an argument to be made for practicality in the struggle ahead—some have pointed out that it only serves the fascist regime to blow up our networks, even on questionable platforms.
The antidote to my despair this week was being with my family, progressive friends and colleagues as much as I could. A good friend hosted a lovely MLK Day brunch at her house, and we all avoided watching the inauguration together. Folks at the brunch are working to start a local Red Wine and Blue chapter, so I’m hoping that local organizing and doing what we can in our communities will be one way to fight back.
I also taught a bunch of classes I guess are now radical—my introduction to literature classes are reading Junot DÃaz’s short story collection This Is How You Lose Her, a critique of toxic masculinity and a humanization of undocumented immigrants. In WGST we discussed how biological sex is a separate but related category to gender, a concept clearly supported by all the academic disciplines that study it, and in clear opposition to the Christian Nationalist wishful thinking in Trump’s anti-trans executive order.
A postcard for your congressional representatives?
And yesterday I was able to spend part of the day with members of our college’s Board of Trustees (I’m up for promotion to full professor). Our Board is composed of dedicated alums, local community leaders, ministers and people committed to the values of the PCUSA church, that supports the rights of immigrants, women and LGBTQ people. In light of Bishop Budde’s courage in pleading for mercy and understanding (yassss, Episcopal Church, I see you), I think a key part of our fight moving forward has to be celebrating and positioning churches as a part of progressive movements. (Check out the work of one of our college alums, Jack Jenkins: American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country). Leftists are real Christians, too, y’all.
Propublica wrote a good piece on the women in legislatures in the Southeast (tldr: still woefully few), and we’re starting our legislative session here in SC with ZERO Republican women in the Senate, because the state party primaried the women that tried to block a total abortion ban. In good news, the SC House added one more woman this week with the election of Courtney Waters to District 113.
Stay strong, friends. I went to see Demi Moore’s new film The Substance last weekend, and if you can stomach body horror, highly recommend. One of the best takedowns of youth-obsessed American botox beauty culture I’ve seen (hello, Pam Bondi why do you look like a 24 year old from a distance?!). It’s also a fabulous parody of the ogling male gaze we so often see in films and on the streets. Recommend it to all the Joe Rogan fans in your life (lol).
Demi Moore’s character has a breakdown. Same, girl, same.
We’re doing this. We can do this together.