Politics

The Trump Resistance Won’t Be Putting on ‘Pussy Hats’ This Time

Published

1 year ago

January 19, 2025

The Trump Resistance Won’t Be Putting on ‘Pussy Hats’ This Time

The week after Election Day in 2016, Shirley Morganelli, a women’s health nurse and lifelong Democrat, invited a dozen friends over to the living room of her rowhouse in Bethlehem, Pa., for a glass of wine. Actually, many glasses.

“Misery loves company,” she said.

Ms. Morganelli’s friends, mostly women then in their 50s and 60s, were teachers, nurses, artists and ardent supporters of Hillary Clinton. Some of them had dressed in suffragist white to cast their votes that day, expecting to celebrate the election of America’s first female president. Instead, they had ended the night consoling their college-aged daughters.

“When she called me at three o’clock in the morning — I get all choked up now, because it was the first time I couldn’t say, ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’” said Angela Sinkler, a nurse and former school board member in Bethlehem.

The get-together — Ms. Morganelli called it “unhappy hour” — became a regular event. By the end of the month, commiserating had turned into organizing. They started with writing postcards to elected officials calling on them to oppose Donald J. Trump’s agenda, then moved on to raising money for a local Planned Parenthood chapter and joining in community protests.

Local political candidates began showing up to their gatherings, too, and the group, now called Lehigh Valley ROAR, turned to campaigning. In 2018, several members were elected to City Council in Bethlehem, and Susan Wild, the city solicitor in nearby Allentown and old friend of Ms. Morganelli’s, was elected to Congress with the group’s support.

Lehigh Valley ROAR was one of more than 2,000 similar grass-roots groups formed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s first election — a moment of mass organization larger than even the Tea Party movement at its peak during President Barack Obama’s first term, said Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University professor of government and sociology who has studied both movements.

A vast majority of the groups were led by women, and many traced a similar arc to Ms. Morganelli’s, their shock at Mr. Trump’s election sparking political activism and then, often, electoral victories.

But then there was the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

As Mr. Trump returns to the White House on Monday with a popular vote majority and a governing trifecta in Washington, there are few signs of the sort of mass public protest that birthed “the resistance” the last time he took office.

Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017 was met with the largest single-day public demonstration in American history. Although thousands marched in Washington Saturday and smaller protests were held in other cities, their numbers fell far short of the hundreds of thousands that rallied eight years ago.

Organizers of the 2017 efforts say this shift reflects the lessons learned from the street protests that took place early in the first Trump presidency, tactics that were quickly abandoned in favor of more strategic organizing — and that opposition to a second Trump term is unlikely to take the same forms.

But some concede that the opposition is more uncertain than it once was. Congressional Democrats and governors now openly debate the wisdom of locking arms against Mr. Trump’s agenda, as they eventually did during his first presidency. And Democrats still now bear scars from last year’s conflicts over Israel’s invasions of Gaza and Lebanon, their embrace of identity politics and President Biden’s aborted candidacy.

In 2017, “everything felt bigger, more important,” said Krista Suh, a screenwriter in Los Angeles. When the Women’s March was announced for the day after Mr. Trump’s swearing-in, Ms. Suh, a novice knitter, came up with a pattern for a cat-eared pink cap to wear to the protest and posted it online.

Within days, “pussy hats” became a ubiquitous emblem of anti-Trump dissent.

Ms. Suh has stayed somewhat politically involved; she canvassed for Ms. Harris in Arizona. But she had no plans to protest this weekend.

“I feel like I’m just so much more jaded now,” she said.

‘He Won the Popular Vote’

When members of Lehigh Valley ROAR assembled once again in Ms. Morganelli’s living room this month, days before Mr. Trump would return to the White House, few were certain about what they should do next. They had canvassed and phone-banked for Ms. Harris. “You name it, we did it,” Ms. Morganelli said.

Ms. Wild had lost her seat, too.

In the corner of Ms. Morganelli’s living room, a cardboard cutout of Mr. Obama still wore a pink hat from the 2017 Women’s March, which most of the group members had attended. But none of them were going to Washington to protest Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Some members had come to question the effectiveness of the Women’s March. Others were now more concerned about the safety of demonstrating. Last fall, one member’s car was broken into by someone who also tore up the Harris yard signs she had in the back seat.

Four years after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Ms. Morganelli was ambivalent about the optics of protesting the outcome of a fair election.

“This time, he won the popular vote,” she said, referring to the president-elect. “As good Americans and good Democrats, you have to accept that, right?”

Instead of protest, the group planned to get together to drink wine and write thank-you notes to Mr. Biden. “Moving forward, all we can do is try to be our best selves as good citizens,” Ms. Morganelli wrote on the group’s Facebook page.

A Resistance With Some Regrets

In its early days, the opposition to Mr. Trump seemed to practically organize itself. Grieving liberals poured their energy into any vessel available. People who had never organized a protest in their lives were transformed into leaders of demonstrations of historic scale, sometimes overnight, as was the case for Naomi Lindquester.

Jolted by Mr. Trump’s election, Ms. Lindquester, then a 42-year-old elementary schoolteacher in Denver, created a Facebook event called Women’s March on Denver. She thought she would have to beg her friends to attend.

Instead, the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 people arrived at the State Capitol to denounce the new president. It was likely the largest demonstration in the history of Colorado.

The Women’s March protests drew some 500,000 attendees to Washington and hundreds of thousands more rallied across the country. But the groups that materialized to organize them, often led by media-savvy young urban professionals, soon found themselves struggling to maintain momentum and, at times, infighting.

The national Women’s March organization splintered after one organizer accused others of antisemitism. Other groups disintegrated amid more prosaic conflicts over priorities and egos.

“It got really ugly, really fast,” said Ms. Lindquester, who has not spoken with her fellow organizers of the Denver march since they fell out in late 2018.

Many such groups, she believes, were victims of their sudden celebrity. “I’ll be really honest with you,” she said, “I very much enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame.”

Since November, Ms. Lindquester has found herself questioning the impact of the march she organized. “The fact that we did that ginormous march and he still got re-elected a second time?” she said.

She has mostly stepped back from public politics — a shift that was in part a result of her move from Denver to a small, conservative town elsewhere in the state, and the heightened scrutiny on teachers’ politics in recent years.

While she was proud of her role in the 2017 protest, “I don’t talk to anyone about that, because I will hear about it if I do,” she said.

In a Facebook post this month she suggested a list of actions that she argued would make a bigger difference now than marching: Plant trees. Volunteer in the community. “Engage with people who think differently than you and find your common ground.”

A New Message: ‘This Is Hard.’

Some argue that the energy is still out there, but the goals are different. Ezra Levin, the executive director of Indivisible, an organization he co-founded in 2017 to channel grass-roots opposition to Mr. Trump, said the group had registered more new local chapters since November than it had at any other point since 2017.

In a new blueprint for action released shortly after the election, Indivisible urged its members to focus not just on Mr. Trump and Congress but also on local elected officials — particularly Democrats in blue states that could serve as a bulwark for resisting Mr. Trump’s policies.

It conceded that “too often in Trump 1.0, we embraced the aesthetics of protests instead of using them as part of a strategy.”

“You shouldn’t start with a tactic,” Mr. Levin said. “You should start with a goal.”

In Ms. Morganelli’s living room, the Lehigh Valley ROAR members spoke of leaning on one another even more as some family members drifted away from their politics in recent years: children who had grown enamored with right-wing survivalism or opposition to vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic, or turned on Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris over their support for Israel.

“I lost my liberal, progressive son to Joe Rogan,” one said, as others nodded in sympathy.

They felt alienated from younger Democratic activists who seemed to see fighting Mr. Trump as a lesser priority than matters of ideological purity.

“If you’re not lefty-left enough, they are willing to sacrifice their vote and throw it away,” either by not voting or voting for a third-party candidate, said Lori McFarland, a member of the group who is now the chairwoman of the Lehigh County Democratic Committee. “And they’ve just set us back.”

Ms. Suh, the “pussy hat” creator, has not sought to reprise her role in the protest movement. She thought that a unifying phenomenon like her hat would still be possible — but the message should now be something different than the defiance of early 2017.

“I think,” she said, “it has to be something like: ‘I hear you. This is hard.’”

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Politics

Senate hopeful with deep Dem ties slapped with scathing complaint targeting alleged family payout ‘scheme’

Published

9 hours ago

March 23, 2026

Press Room

Senate hopeful with deep Dem ties slapped with scathing complaint targeting alleged family payout ‘scheme’

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FIRST ON FOX: A watchdog is urging the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate Nebraska Senate hopeful Dan Osborn, alleging he is improperly steering campaign funds for personal use to nearly half-a-dozen of his relatives, including around a quarter-million-dollars to his wife alone, through his principal campaign committee and a web of political action committees.

Last month, Fox News Digital reported on Osborn’s spending that has come under scrutiny, showing that north of $370,000 had been disbursed to his wife, daughter, sister-in-law, and to himself through his campaign and a web of political action committees.

A complaint filed with the FEC Monday by conservative watchdog Americans for Public Trust, is now calling on the FEC to investigate Osborn’s spending, and lays out even more relatives receiving money from Osborn’s campaign plus another consulting firm his wife works at that has been receiving funds. In total, the complaint says, Osborn, his wife Megan, daughter Georgia, sister-in-law Jodi, second sister-in-law Bridget and brother-in-law James have received $434,734.42.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Osborn campaign with questions about the payments, but many of them went unanswered. However, a campaign spokesperson did tell Fox News Digital that the campaign “is fully compliant with all FEC rules.”

FIVE SLEEPER RACES THAT COULD UPEND 2026 – FROM THE ALLEGHENIES TO THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT

Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn chats with attendees after speaking during his campaign stop at the Handlebend coffeshop in O’Neill, Neb., on Monday, October 14, 2024. Osborn is running againt Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“We haven’t received any formal complaints, but what you describe are baseless, nuisance allegations designed to slow Dan’s momentum as he’s tied with Pete Ricketts in four straight polls,” the spokesperson said.

While paying family members with campaign money is not necessarily a violation of campaign finance law, concerns have been raised about whether Osborn’s payments to his family members have followed the campaign finance laws that must still be adhered to, such as that the pay must be at fair-market value, it must be strictly for campaign services, must be transparently reported and must not be used for personal expenses, meaning expenses incurred irregardless of the ongoing campaign, like housing costs.

Entities not controlled and operated by candidates can deal in what is called “soft money,” or money that does not need to comply with federal limits. However, that money cannot then be controlled by the candidate to help him directly with his campaign. Money from entities controlled by candidates, often referred to as “hard money,” must follow the FEC’s limits and other rules.

Americans for Public Trust is accusing Osborn of using an end-around to funnel money to his relatives, including from a now-defunct campaign. They cite the fact that Osborn’s Working Class Heroes Fund (WCHF), which he launched in 2024, has a “join the movement” button that routes users to a form so they can be contacted by a different PAC called the League of Labor Voters. They also cite the involvement of Osborn’s custodian of records for his failed 2024 Senate campaign, Brandon Philipczyk, who was also listed as such in Statement of Organization for Osborn’s WCHF and LLV until just a few days ago.

Americans for Public Trust is alleging that these are not truly outside groups — they are effectively part of Osborn’s operation — and therefore shouldn’t be raising or spending money in ways that function like an end-around to bypass federal limitations.

SQUAD-BACKED PROGRESSIVES HIT WITH ‘COLD SHOWER’ AS MODERATES WIN ILLINOIS PRIMARIES

“Despite being established, financed, maintained, or controlled by federal candidate Dan Osborn and his agents, WCHF and LLV have solicited, received, directed, transferred, or spent funds that do not comply with FECA’s contribution limitations, source prohibitions, and reporting requirements, including receiving contributions from individuals in excess of $5,000 and receiving funds from prohibited sources,” the complaint letter to the FEC states.

Independent Dan Osborn, a challenger to two-term Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024, chats with guests at a brewery in Beatrice, Neb. (AP/Margery Beck)

Osborn’s wife, Megan, who reportedly was a former bar manager, has raked in around a quarter-million dollars from Osborn’s campaign and a web of political action committees tied to him. In some cases, Megan has gotten money directly from her husband’s campaign and in other cases she has received it from two firms, one called Independent Campaigns LLC, which Megan has a one-third ownership stake in, and Dark Forest LLC, which official candidate disclosures show Megan gets compensation from.

Just two days after Independent Campaigns was set up, Osborn’s WCHF made its first $50,000 payment to the firm, according to local Nebraska news outlet the Lincoln-Journal Star. Thus far, per the FEC complaint, Independent Campaigns has received nearly $200,000 from Osborn and WCHF and another PAC called the League of Labor Voters (LLV), which Americans for Public Trust also alleges is controlled by Osborn.

In total, per the Americans for Public Trust complaint letter, Osborn’s wife has been able to rake in close to $300,00 for herself for things like “strategy consulting” and work reimbursements.

Osborn’s daughter Georgia, a part-time dancer who Osborn says still needs help paying her bills, was given $4,200 between when Osborn’s first 2024 campaign lost, and before launching his 2026 bid. The money was for “assistant services” from the then-dormant campaign.

Osborn’s sister-in-law, Jodi, received $1,400 for “treasurer services” from WCHF at the end of 2025, according to campaign disclosures which also show that she is listed as WCHF’s Treasurer.

GOP OVERPERFORMS IN VIRGINIA SPECIAL ELECTION, FUELING EARLY MOMENTUM TALK IN BLUE-TRENDING STATE

Meanwhile, the group also points to a $2,500 payment to Osborn’s brother-in-law, who served as treasurer of Osborn’s 2024 committee, as part of what it calls a broader pattern of family-linked payments that should be scrutinized for bona fide services and fair-market rates.

“Perhaps the Osborn family is teeming with previously undiscovered, dynastic political talent, akin to the Kennedys or Roosevelts,” the Americans for Public Trust letter to the FEC says. “Or perhaps Mr. Osborn has realized his ability to funnel large amounts of unchecked campaign cash to his own family.”

Caitlin Sutherland, Executive Director of Americans for Public Trust, added that Osborn “has become too comfortable blurring the lines between family, fortune, and campaign finance law.”

“Osborn has engaged in various tactics — including utilizing a defunct campaign account — to enrich members of both his immediate and extended family,” Sutherland continued. “In addition to lining the pockets of his close relatives, who appear to lack any notable professional campaign experience—Osborn is racking up federal campaign finance violations by orchestrating a scheme that seemingly finds him illegally running and controlling multiple federal PACs.”

Besides questions about how Osborn is paying himself and his loved ones, critics of the candidate have also balked at his decision to run as an Independent. Osborn has indicated he has no plans to caucus with either major party if elected and says on his website that, as an Independent, he is “uniquely positioned” to get things done in Congress. Meanwhile, speaking at a town hall, Osborn reportedly told Nebraskans that if his bid as an Independent didn’t work out, “there’s only one party I would caucus with.”

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When pressed on which political party he was speaking of, Osborn replied: “Not (Republican) Pete Ricketts’s party,” according to the audio reviewed by Nebraska news organization The Plains Sentinel. However, Osborn’s decision to cash in on national Democratic Party support, including utilizing the party’s main fundraising platform, ActBlue, have led to questions about how independent he really will be.

Labor Union leader Dan Osborn is running for a second election in a row to be a U.S. Senator after losing in 2024. (Leigh Vogel/Wire Image and Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In December, Osborn was slammed for hiring an anti-cop staffer seen at an anti-police event featuring severed pig heads, and the agency creating Osborn’s ads, Fight Agency, was also behind ads for the Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, and other Democrats.

One of the firm’s leaders said they were struck by Osborn’s “over performance” in 2024, leading him to surmise “that Democrats need to run a lot of different kinds of campaigns.”

The consulting firm co-owned by Osborn’s wife, Independent Campaigns, has also worked with Democrat candidates. FEC filings show Nathan Sage, a Democrat running for Senate in Iowa, has paid thousands to Osborn’s wife’s consulting firm.

Politics

Californians may need to mail ballots early as Supreme Court signals support for new election day deadline

Published

10 hours ago

March 23, 2026

Press Room

Californians may need to mail ballots early as Supreme Court signals support for new election day deadline

WASHINGTON — Californians may be forced to put their ballots in the mail well before election day to be certain they will be counted.

That’s the likely outcome of a Republican challenge to mail ballots that came before the Supreme Court on Monday.

The court’s six conservatives sounded ready to rule that federal law requires that ballots must be received by election day if they are to be counted as legal.

In the 19th century, Congress set a national day for federal elections on a Tuesday in early November, but it did not say how or when states would count their ballots. The Constitution leaves it to states to decide the “times, places and manners for holding elections.”

California and 13 other states count mail ballots that were cast before or on election day but arrive a few days late. And most states accept late ballots from members of the military who are stationed overseas.

By law, California counts mail ballots that arrive within seven days of election day. In 2024, more than 406,000 of these late-arriving ballots were counted in California, about 2.5% of the total.

Other Western states — Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Alaska — also count late-arriving mail ballots.

But President Trump has repeatedly claimed that voting by mail leads to fraud, and the Republican National Committee has gone to court to challenge the state laws that allow for counting the legally cast ballots of citizens which are postmarked on time but arrive late.

GOP lawyers argued that the phrase “election day” has always meant ballots must be in the hands of election officials on that day. In their questions and comments, all six conservatives agreed.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. saw a real prospect of fraud. There could be “a big stash of ballots” that arrive late and “flip the outcome,” he said.

Democrats and election law experts say that the proposed new rule conflicts with more than a century of practice, because most states allowed for some people to vote by mail if they were traveling on election day. They argued that election day is like the federal tax day of April 15. While tax returns must be postmarked then, the tax returns are legal even if they arrive at the Internal Revenue Service a few days later.

The GOP filed its challenge in Mississippi, which accepts ballots that arrive up to five days after election day. A district judge rejected the claim, but a 5th Circuit Court panel with three Trump appointees ruled that ballots are illegal if they are not received by election day.

The case before the court is Watson vs. Republican National Committee.

California has been criticized for taking weeks to count all the votes, but that issue was not raised in this case.

Politics

As cattle herds shrink and beef prices rise, investors back AI cow collars

Published

21 hours ago

March 23, 2026

Press Room

As cattle herds shrink and beef prices rise, investors back AI cow collars

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A startup putting high-tech collars on cows could soon be worth more than $2 billion, as investors bet the technology could help farmers cut costs and cope with labor shortages.

Halter, a New Zealand-based company, is in talks to raise new funding in a deal expected to be led by billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, according to a Bloomberg report. The round is attracting heavy investor interest and is close to being filled, though final details are still being negotiated.

THE SINGLE CRUSHING PROBLEM AMERICAN CATTLE RANCHERS WISH TRUMP WOULD FIX INSTEAD

A ranch hand rounds up cattle by horseback and drive them into the pens at the Adams Ranch Inc. in St. Lucie County, Florida on July 9, 2013. (Ty Wright/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Farmers are increasingly looking for ways to lower expenses and boost efficiency — changes that could eventually affect food prices for consumers.

Beef prices are already soaring, and economists warn Americans shouldn’t expect relief anytime soon as the U.S. cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest size in 75 years.

The decline has been driven by years of drought, rising costs and an aging ranching workforce. Experts say rebuilding herds will take years, meaning beef prices are likely to remain elevated.

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, the average price of beef in grocery stores climbed from about $8.60 per pound in February 2025 to $10.12 per pound a year later — a roughly 18% increase.

THE COST OF THIS GROCERY STAPLE IS NEARING RECORD HIGHS — AND AMERICANS CAN’T GET ENOUGH

Against that backdrop, Halter is pitching technology aimed at helping farmers do more with less.

The company’s solar-powered, artificial intelligence-driven collars let ranchers herd cattle without fences, using GPS, sound and vibration signals controlled through a smartphone app. The system also tracks livestock health and movement in real time, giving farmers a way to manage herds remotely.

The goal is straightforward — fewer workers, lower costs and more efficient land use.

THE SURPRISING REASON WHY AMERICANS COULD FACE HIGH BEEF PRICES FOR YEARS

Cattle are shown in pens at the Cattlemen’s Columbus Livestock Auction in Columbus Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images)

Halter is part of a broader push toward “precision agriculture,” where technology is used to modernize farming. But that sector has struggled in recent years, with a wave of startups collapsing and investors pulling back amid high costs and slow adoption.

The company has also expanded into the U.S., opening an office in Colorado and targeting American ranchers as a key growth market.

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If the latest round closes as expected, it would signal renewed confidence that AI can succeed in farming — an industry where many tech bets have fallen short.

Halter did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Amanda covers the intersection of business and politics for Fox News Digital.