Democrats Torched for Their Weak Protest at Trump Speech

Non-MAGA Americans have been clamoring for a legitimate resistance to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s haphazard dismantling of the federal government. So when Democrats appeared before the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night wearing fuschia and waving auction paddles in a mode of protest against the MAGA takeover, the public was a little disappointed.

MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend torched liberal lawmakers for silently flipping paddles that read missives directed at Trump while the president prattled on about endless falsehoods: “False,” “Musk Steals,” “Save Medicaid,” the signs read.

“They are not taking back the House with these visuals,” Sanders-Townsend posted on X.

But the visuals were hardly there. Viewers watching live at home would never have known that Democrats were silently paddling their way through the speech, or that a handful of them had stood up and walked out of the chamber in protest, as TV cameras never bothered to pan to their mute, undisruptive spectacle.

In a letter issued Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged his party to make a “strong” and “dignified” presence at Trump’s speech, rather than run away. During Trump’s address, a large collection of Democratic women on the left side of the aisle were seen wearing pink, while men wore blue and yellow ties in quiet opposition to Trump’s agenda.

“Democratic leadership did not do their members any favors by stifling their desires to speak out,” Sanders-Townsend wrote in another post.

Meanwhile, the meaningless show became instant fodder for late-night comedians, who were all too eager to point out that the Republican trifecta in Washington would not be slowed down by some bright attire.

“He barked out one appalling claim after another, but don’t you worry: Democrats are getting ready to fight back with their little paddles,” said The Late Show host Stephen Colbert.

“That is how you save democracy: by quietly dissenting,” he continued. “Or bidding on an antique tea set. It was hard to tell what was going on.”

Colbert then brought out his own paddle, which urged Democrats to “Try Doing Something.”

At least one spontaneous protest by a Democratic lawmaker was more profound. Texas Representative Al Green made waves from the onset of Trump’s opening remarks, interrupting the president by yelling, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

That got Green ousted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the sergeant of arms to remove the 77-year-old from the chamber against a backdrop of jeers from Republicans.

“Some people have questioned why so much muscle was needed to remove one old man with a cane. But it turns out it was for a serious reason: When security searched him, they found that he had smuggled in a spine,” Colbert quipped.

Democrats spent days deciding how to protest Trump’s address. A small faction decided not to attend. That included Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Patty Murray, the latter of whom said Monday that the true state of the union saw Trump “spitting in the face of the law.”

The Supreme Court denied Donald Trump’s emergency bid to cancel nearly $2 billion in government funding to the United States Agency for International Development.

In a 5–4 vote, the court on Wednesday rejected Trump’s attempt last month to freeze funding to USAID already approved by Congress.

Conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts sided with the court’s liberals to shut down the Trump move.

The court did not immediately say when the funding must be released, and the debate will now move back to lower courts.

Upon taking office, Trump and Elon Musk launched an assault on USAID, the largest global provider of foreign aid, gutting funding to the agency, firing thousands of workers, and refusing to pay contractors for work that was already completed.

On February 25, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered the government to pay “all invoices and letter of credit drawdown requests” for work done at USAID prior to February 13, enforcing a temporary restraining order he issued earlier in February. The Trump administration was given a deadline of midnight on Wednesday to fulfill his request.

The president then filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.

“Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed … the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order,” the high court’s ruling reads.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented the decision.

“The District court has made plain its frustrations with the Government, and respondents raise serious concerns about nonpayment for completed work,” Alito wrote in his dissent. But the relief ordered, is quite simply too extreme a response.”

The decision is among the first of many Supreme Court rulings to come as Trump’s attack on the Constitution continues to unfold.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump said, during his address to Congress Tuesday night, that “the days of unelected bureaucrats are over,” referencing his mass purge of federal employees.

Democrats in the chamber immediately laughed, and were quick to stand and point at an unelected bureaucrat in attendance who was given sweeping powers by Trump: Elon Musk. Others pointed out Trump’s blatant hypocrisy on social media.

Since Trump’s inauguration, Musk has used his pet project, the pseudo–Department of Government Efficiency, to overhaul the federal government and claim that billions of dollars in wasteful spending was being cut. In reality, government spending has gone up, DOGE has had to correct some of its own false numbers, and Musk has personally benefited from the government takeover. The greedy welfare billionaire and world’s richest man has gotten even wealthier as one of the most powerful unelected bureaucrats in history.

The president revealed who’s really running the Department of Government Efficiency, days after his administration offered a cozy alternative in order to salvage the group’s work as it’s interrogated in the courts.

While discussing DOGE in his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, Trump mentioned that the unofficial agency is “headed up by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight.”

But that wasn’t the administration’s story last week. In a court declaration filed Monday, the White House asserted that Musk’s official title is “senior adviser” to Trump. That title offers the unelected billionaire “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” the administration claimed, and leaves him with no formal responsibilities to run DOGE as either an employee or an administrator, as a mere employee of the White House.

The administration claims the real head of DOGE is Amy Gleason, a low-profile, first-term Trump official with experience in health care tech. Mere weeks before her name came up as the chief of the controversial organization, attorneys for the Justice Department didn’t know her, and even DOGE staffers were unaware that she had been fronting the operation as recently as one day before her role was announced.

The explanation came as Musk faced growing legal scrutiny for his role in dismantling federal agencies and firing thousands of federal employees. The Trump administration had argued that Musk was not the head of DOGE in order to defend the group’s work from several lawsuits.

On Friday, confusion over Musk’s role led to a tense back-and-forth between Judge Theodore Chuang and Justice Department attorney Joshua Gardner, with Chuang noting that the administration’s sudden excuse was “highly suspicious” and “raises questions.”

“There’s an affidavit saying he’s a senior adviser of the president,” Chuang said. “But there’s a ‘strange disconnect’ where he has referred to himself in public as affiliated with DOGE and not as a senior adviser to the president—until recently, after these lawsuits were filed.

Trump’s Freudian slip Tuesday night could warrant further interrogations into the nature of Musk’s involvement in DOGE.

In a press conference last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt falsely claimed that Gleason’s appointment had been common knowledge for weeks and that the Trump administration had been completely “transparent” about her appointment. (By Wednesday, Gleason’s LinkedIn had not been updated to reflect her new role.)

Democratic resistance to Donald Trump’s agenda was remarkably quiet on Tuesday, barely managing to make it on camera during the president’s official State of the Union address.

While Trump rattled on about all the myriad ways in which his administration is working to undermine and dismantle federal agencies, Representatives Jasmine Crockett and Maxwell Frost stood up to leave the lower chamber. As Crockett approached the door to exit, she took off her jacket and revealed the back of her shirt, which read “RESIST,” reported The Hill’s Mychael Schnell.

Frost, who had also removed his coat, had on a black shirt that read, “No kings live here,” per Courthouse News’s Benjamin Weiss.

A cohort of Democrats stood up and followed them, according to Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman, similarly turning their backs to Trump as they removed their coats to reveal T-shirts that also read, “RESIST.”

Other protests by Democratic lawmakers were more profound. Texas Representative Al Green made waves from the onset of Trump’s opening remarks, interrupting the president by yelling, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” That got him ousted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the sergeant of arms to remove the 77-year-old from the chamber.

Democrats spent days deciding how to protest Trump’s address. A small faction decided not to attend. That included Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Patty Murray, the latter of whom on Monday said that the true state of the union saw Trump “spitting in the face of the law.”

At the beginning of Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night, Democratic Representative Al Green was removed from the chamber after interrupting the president.

Green reportedly kept yelling at Trump, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” The Houston-area congressman, 77, also waved his cane in the direction of the president. Speaker Mike Johnson warned Green to stop several times—before ordering the sergeant of arms to remove him from the chamber.

Green’s removal is unprecedented in the history of presidential addresses to Congress, as dissenting members of Congress usually aren’t removed from the chamber, even if they’ve shouted at the president. Green, who has already introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, probably won’t mind being the first.

The radical divide in American politics was on full display during Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress from the very moment he stepped into the upper chamber.

As the president passed droves of fawning Republican lawmakers, a small protest by one Democrat was snatched away from her by a member across the aisle.

Representative Melanie Stansbury held up a sheet of paper that read, “This is not normal,” before Texas Representative Lance Gooden ripped it away from the New Mexico Democrat and tossed it in the air.

Democrats have spent days deciding how to protest Trump’s unofficial State of the Union address. A small faction decided not to attend. That included Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Patty Murray, the latter of whom on Monday said that the true state of the union saw Trump “spitting in the face of the law.”

But that plan flew in the face of the silent protest top Democrats in Congress had organized. In a letter issued Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged his party to make a “strong” and “dignified” presence at Trump’s speech, rather than run away. During Trump’s address, a large collection of Democratic women on the left side of the aisle were seen wearing pink while men wore blue and yellow ties in quiet opposition to Trump’s agenda.

“There is nothing I can do to make them laugh or smile or applaud,” Trump told the chamber once his speech began, and after Texas Representative Al Green had been booted from the session by House Speaker Mike Johnson. Trump then went on to argue that he deserved the adoration of Democrats on the basis that he had already made “astronomical achievements” in his time in office.

“This is a time for big dreams and bold action,” Trump continued, underscoring his executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization, and his freeze on hiring federal workers and on delivering foreign aid, among other monumentally disruptive executive actions.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is charged with eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. But some of its employees are earning hefty taxpayer-funded paychecks. 

Wired reports that some software engineers and executives who are part of DOGE are drawing six-figure salaries, in some cases from the government agencies they are cutting. For example, Jeremy Lewin, a DOGE staffer assigned to the General Services Administration who helped lead attacks on the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the National Institutes of Health, is pulling in $167,000 per year. 

In another instance, Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is making a salary of $195,200, the maximum annual salary that a “General Schedule” federal employee can make, including bonuses. And Nate Cavanaugh, 28, whose work for DOGE comprises interviewing GSA employees, makes over $120,500 per year. That’s close to what the average GSA employee, who typically has been with the agency for 13 years, earns per year at $128,565.

When he began recruiting for DOGE in November, Musk described the work as “tedious” and said “compensation is zero,” calling his ideal candidates “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” So far, the pseudo-agency has tapped into vital government systems and fired thousands of employees. 

Now it appears that compensation is far higher than zero for at least a few employees. Despite Musk describing DOGE as “maximum transparent,” spending and salary ranges for the effort have not been made public. A recent report says that DOGE has received about $40 million in funding, and the White House did not respond to Wired’s questions about salary ranges or where DOGE’s funding is coming from in the federal budget.

DOGE’s cuts are ostensibly supposed to be saving taxpayers money, but not only are some of its employees drawing a high salary, government spending has actually gone up since the inauguration. Plus, while DOGE was claiming billions of dollars in savings, it has had to go back and make corrections to many of its claims, showing that its boasts were exaggerated or fraudulent.

The high salaries seem to be part of the many lies coming from Musk and his pet project about how much money DOGE is saving and what it’s actually doing. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise from a greedy welfare billionaire who owes much of his wealth to government funding, and who is enriching himself even more with his and Donald Trump’s government overhaul.   

Donald Trump’s top lawyer Alina Habba defended the firing of thousands of U.S. military veterans on Tuesday, claiming they “perhaps” aren’t capable of doing their jobs.

“You know, we care about veterans tremendously.… But at the same time, we have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work,” Habba told reporters on Tuesday. “That doesn’t mean that we forget our veterans by any means, we are going to care for them in the right way, but perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment or not willing to come to work.

“And we can’t, you know, I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say sorry, you know, they’re not going to come to work,” Habba said. “It’s just not acceptable.”

As part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s purge of the federal government, Trump and Elon Musk have fired an estimated 6,000 veterans from the federal workforce as of last week. Veterans make up one-third of the federal workforce.

The mass firings have also exacerbated a longtime staffing shortage at the Department of Veteran Affairs. More than 2,000 VA employees have been fired since Trump took office, hindering their ability to seek health care or adjudicate their disability claims.

Last week, DOGE also canceled over 800 contracts that help VA employees with hiring as well as offering medical services and cancer programs, though some of the cancellations have since been walked back, making things even more confusing.

The cuts have sparked outrage among veterans and Democratic lawmakers. The two groups have banded together against the president, despite an estimated 65 percent of veterans who voted in the 2024 election having backed Trump, according to exit polling.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are utterly betraying our veterans—indiscriminately firing men and women who have served our nation in uniform and endangering the care and benefits they deserve and have earned,” Democratic Senator Patty Murray said in a statement last week.

But Habba justified Trump’s attack on veterans, arguing that it’s their fault they no longer have a job. Her comments come shortly before Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, where a number of Democrats have invited fired federal employees—including veterans—as their guests.

Once again, Republicans are asking the American public to forgo the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Republican lawmakers were met with fire and fury over the weekend as their constituents hounded them for failing to intervene in a budget resolution that will result in billions in cuts to Medicaid, as well as refusing to speak out against Elon Musk’s unchecked dissolution of federal agencies and, with it, thousands of federal jobs and popular social programs.

But at least one Republican has decided the best option is to threaten criminal charges for Americans who dare to dissent against Donald Trump’s agenda. Speaking with the Meg Ellefson Show on Friday, Wisconsin Representative Derrick Van Orden likened his constituents to Nazis, claiming that only Communists and fascists would protest their lawmakers.

“People who associated with the Communist movement and the National Socialism movement used to get their way politically, is—they would do stuff like this, and they were called agitators,” Van Orden told the podcast.

Fact check: It was notoriously unsafe to speak out against the government in Soviet Russia, as well as in Nazi Germany. Under the Nazi regime, Germany shuttered anti-Nazi newspapers, controlled what media appeared in newspapers and on the radio, banned books that the Third Reich determined were “un-German,” and by 1934 had made it officially illegal to criticize the Nazi government, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Freedom of speech and the right to protest, on the other hand, have been cornerstones of American democracy since the country was founded.

Van Orden then said that if protesters came to his town halls and acted “in an unlawful manner,” or if they were “disrupting or refusing to leave a venue,” then he would have them “arrested and charged with a class B misdemeanor.”

Van Orden’s outlandish comments preceded instructions by the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who on Tuesday directed party members to stop holding in-person town halls to avoid the backlash. House Speaker Mike Johnson endorsed the order later Tuesday, washing his hands of lawmakers’ upset constituents by watering them down as “professional protesters.”

Meanwhile, Trump explicitly threatened to violate the Constitution on Tuesday, pledging to prosecute protesters and withhold federal funding from universities or schools if attendees choose to express their First Amendment rights.