In this edition:
- Epolitics update
- Article: Make It Visceral, Make It Real
- A few links to chew on
Epolitics Update
Hi folks, thanks to all the new subsribers who’ve joined the Epolitics Substack in the last few days, including our first paid subscribers! Now it’s on me to live up to your trust. If you’re new to Epolitics.com and the Substack, be sure to check out the guide to personal advocacy in the new Trump era. It’s been a hit.
Also, my digital advocacy strategy training webinar took place yesterday, with 81 people signed registered and about half able to attend in person. Everyone who signed up will get a separate message with a link to the YouTube version of the recording, but I’m happy to give you guys a chance to check it out before anyone else (note: time to get a better microphone).
My next two trainings are coming up fast! Don’t miss your chance to join live.
- February 19: Preparing for Digital Rapid Response: How To Be Ready When the Moment Strikes [Register now via Eventbrite]
- March 6: Online Fundraising 101 [Register now via Eventbrite]
Next up, I’ll be presenting my digital rapid response training at the upcoming Digital Strategy Summit. More on that to come! In the meantime, you can follow me on Bluesky, Threads, or Twitter/X.
Make It Visceral, Make It Real: We Need Stories, Not Sound Bites
Also published on the Epolitics Substack
One of my nieces just lost a medical research internship. A second is about to lose a promised job at a USDA research center. A third works with special-needs kids at a school, and she could lose her job when Trump and Musk slash education funding.
One of my brothers owns a small manufacturing shop, and the tariffs will raise the cost of aluminum and steel enough to put a serious dent in his business. Another member of the extended family works in banking compliance, and financial institutions may cut back on staff and consultants if they don’t have to worry about the rules. My own business has depended on nonprofits for decades, and they’re losing grants right and left. I’m not even covering the less tangible harms, like other extended family members who might be gay and fear they could become a target in the new regime.
That’s a lot of pain for just one family in just three weeks.
Trump and Musk’s “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of the government of the United States of America may turn out to have been a brilliant political strategy in the short term. Move fast, break things, and keep the Democrats, the media and the grassroots off-balance and scared. So far, mission accomplished.
But moving fast also means that the pain hits fast. Mass layoffs of new federal employees (who lack the protections most government workers enjoy) are rolling out as I write this piece, and while MAGA may cheer the dismissal of unelected government bureaucrats, 80% of the federal workforce is NOT in the DC area. Which means that workers are being laid off across the country — in every state, not just the ones that usually vote Democratic. And since about 30% of federal employees served in the military, that means thousands of veterans will be thrown out of their jobs. So multiply the harm my family is feeling by millions, many of whom voted for Trump.
Gutting Medicaid? Cutting cancer research? Both are on the table as the Republicans try to find enough pocket change to cover hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthy. Around half of Medicaid money goes to support older people and people with disabilities, including perhaps 60% of senior citizens in nursing homes. Just one example: my father was in a nursing home in Texas for two years before he died in December, and he was one of TWO people in a facility with 100+ residents who had long-term-care insurance and didn’t have to rely entirely on Medicaid, assuming his coverage didn’t expire before he did.
We should be flooding social media with stories like these. Advocacy groups need to collect these stories. The Democratic party needs to collect these stories. Individual activists need to collect these stories. And we all need to share them through every connection we can think of. You’re on TikTok? Make TikTok videos. Stream your video game sessions on Twitch? Talk about what these radical policies will do to you and your people as you play.
The same on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, group chats and any other place — virtual or real-world — where you interact with people who might listen to you. Show, don’t just tell. If you’re worried about your grandmother being tossed out of a nursing home onto the street, the people who care about you need to know.
NGOs and Democratic elected officials must get in on the game, too, but on a larger scale. The Democratic Party SHOULD be helping us do this work, and in interviews including at last week’s RootsCamp, I have heard at least some signs that the DNC’s new leadership may embrace grassroots organizing in a way the party has long avoided. And of course, advocacy groups and congressmembers alike can amplify our individual stories, helping them reach far beyond our own immediate circles.
Here are just a few of the groups the Trump opposition should mobilize and whose stories they can promote through organic means and paid ads:
- Cancer patients and survivors
- Nurses
- Parents of children with special needs
- Children and grandchildren of people of people in nursing homes
- People who depend on rural hospitals, which could close without Medicaid payments
- Veterans who worry about losing access to VA healthcare after layoffs, or who’d like to see our nuclear weapons stay where they’re supposed to
- Farmers who are losing the ability to sell their crops because of foreign-aid cuts or tariffs
- Small business owners who’ll be hurt by the tariffs and the budget cuts, and their employees
- Those who live in areas prone to wildfires
- People of faith who recognize just how un-Christian the current administration is
But we don’t have time to wait for anyone else. Indivisible is good, rallies are good, phone calls to Congress are good, but if we’re going to stop a group of radicals reshaping our society in their image, we have a whole lot of persuading to do. Of our peers. And for that, we need stories, not statistics. Emotions, not sound bites. We need to make it real.
A Few Links to Chew On
- “There is something fanatical happening in Washington right now, a madness that I’m not sure we’ve all been able to capture in our commentary.”
- Any one of these kids at a U.S. base in Germany show more courage than the entire GOP congressional delegation combined.
- Is politics making a comeback on Facebook? “New data from CAP Action shows that top political pages have seen a surge in engagement in the second Trump era. Will it last?”
- Trump administration to fire thousands at health agencies
- Forest Service fires 3,400 people after ‘deferred resignation’ deadline passes
- On the CFPB layoffs: “So we’re seeing [President] Donald Trump and Elon Musk give a green light to companies to prey on older Americans, service members, young consumers and everyone else…”
- Mass layoffs now paused at US nuclear weapons agency (at least SOMEONE seems to have been paying attention)
- Debbie Cox Bultan: Four Ways The DNC Chair Can Rebuild The Democratic Party from the Ground Up
- Who needs security? “The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone…”
- Let’s be honest about their plan for the federal government. “None of this is inevitable. Much of it will be unpopular…There is still time to block this regime change, to preserve the old values. But first we need to be clear about what is happening, and why.”
- Trump’s attack on the Kennedy Center is petty but powerful. “But his assault on the Kennedy Center is different. It’s not about a change in policy or a rewriting of grant requirements. He’s not complaining about budgets. It’s really not even about disliking the art, because Trump hasn’t actually seen or heard it. He just doesn’t like the idea of it. The thought of it. The thinking.”
- The Leopards-Eating-Faces Party turns out to be composed of leopards who eat people’s faces, and some of its voters are surprised.
– cpd