HEIDI GROOVER AND SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: A lying, bigoted sexual predator is about to become president and we are headed to witness it, surrounded by thousands of the lying, bigoted sexual predatorâs biggest fans. Like much of the country, we feel scared and anxious about this transition of power. Weâre also hopeful about the massive protestsâspecifically the Womenâs Marchâwe expect to see in response.
Maybe our editors can sense our emotional tumult. They send us to DC with mood rings to track our feelings along the way. As we get ready to leave, both rings are blue, which supposedly means ânormal.â This does not feel normal.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18
11 am, flight to DC
Mood ring: Lost already. I have to buy a new one in DC.
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: Iâm writing this on a plane two days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, and I feel like I know what Iâll be walking into. Like the hundreds of other reporters swarming the capital, Iâll soon be witnessing a made-for-TV spectacle for a made-for-TV president who was boosted into power by the internetâs worst conspiracy theories.
This scares me. On bad days, trying to tell the truth through the same screens that helped elect Trump feels irrelevant. On the worst days, I donât know how to orient myself in a reality that can appear to change based on whatever Donald Trump feels like reality should be.
Thinking about this reminds me of a story my dad once told me about my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather, a Jewish immigrant who fled a shtetl in Moldova that no longer exists, had a thing about TVs. He had never owned one, and my dad assumed that was because he couldnât spend the money. As a gift, my dad bought my great-grandfather his first television set for his Brooklyn apartment. But when my father visited him not long after, he noticed something strange had happened to the TV.
It had been unplugged from the wall and covered in a number of blankets. My great-grandfather was afraid that the Soviet government would use the TV to spy on him.
Trumpâs well-documented disdain for journalists and true statements may be new for an American president, but this has happened before. At the time that my great-grandfather fled his shtetl, for example, Czar Nicholas II was using conspiracy theories and âfake newsâ to consolidate his power and drum up fear. The Okhrana, secret agents for the czar, helped publish a conspiracy theory against Russiaâs Jews (âThe Protocols of the Elders of Zionâ) that claimed to detail a Jewish plot to oppress Christians and control global media and wealth. Aided by the printing press, the âProtocolsâ were disseminated widely and used to justify pogroms that killed thousands of Russian Jews. The area where my great-grandfather lived before he came to the US witnessed some particularly gruesome massacres.
I donât know much about my great-grandfatherâs early life, or what he saw, but I do know that his reason for leaving the country was that he didnât want to become âcannon fodder for the Bolsheviks or cannon fodder for the czar.â I can only imagine that whatever scared him, even decades after escaping czarist Russia, had something to do with how he felt about TVs later. Trump may be unprecedented in lots of ways, but devaluing truth in order to seize power is not new. Neither is using peopleâs hunger for information and entertainment against them.
Thereâs a part of me that wishes I could simply unplug from the inauguration, throw a blanket over my laptop, and hide. But thereâs not another America to flee to now. I guess all thatâs left to do is to stay and watch.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
12:30 pm, National Mall
Mood ring: Black, i.e., âsad.â
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: After taking the Metro in from the place Iâm crashing in Northern Virginia, I meet Kimball Allen and Scott Wells near the mammoth stage set for Donald Trumpâs inauguration, just a few hundred feet from the Capitol lawnâs reflecting pool. Trump supporters in âMake America Great Againâ hats and Burberry scarves mill around the two men, snapping photos. The couple, who married in October, accepted inauguration tickets before they knew the outcome of the election. Now, as far as I can tell, theyâre the only gay couple in sight of the platform that will be used tomorrow for swearing in Trump.
âWeâre not here because weâre excited to be here,â Allen tells me. â[My husbandâs] first impulse was, âHell no, why would we be there?â And we thought about it, and said, âNo, we need to have a voice in this America, too.ââ
Allen and Wells met a Trump supporter in the morning who seemed perfectly willing to have a conversation with them. But to a gay couple whose ability to have a family could be targeted by the new administration, the dissonance between âniceâ Trump supporters and their political choices is still deeply disorienting. Republican ideologies arenât foreign to Allen and Wells; both were born into conservative families in Idaho and Indiana respectively. But their families have also started to recognize how their politics affect those close to them, and subsequently, their political alliances have begun to shift, too.
âMy familyâs Republican, but none of them voted Republican this time,â Wells said. âI asked [my mom] why and she said, âBecause I love you.ââ
2 pm, Protein Bar
Mood ring: Blue, ânormal.â
HEIDI GROOVER: After the morning of interviews, Sydney and I meet up at this restaurant to file stories. Outside, we see a Trump supporter trip on a curb. This is very satisfying.
5:30 pm, National Mall
Mood ring: Black, âupset, frustratedâ
HEIDI GROOVER: A crowd has gathered near the Lincoln Memorial for the president-electâs inaugural concert. The smell of cigars mixes with the smell of porta-potties. There is no subtlety in Trumpâs America. Toby Keith takes the stage and sings his post-9/11 anthem âCourtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).â Members of the crowd sing along, their faces lit by the Jumbotrons: âAnd youâll be sorry that you messed with the US of A. âCause weâll put a boot in your ass. Itâs the American way.â
8:30 pm, National Press Club
Mood ring: Deplorable.
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: After the âconcert,â I head to the National Press Club, where Trump signs are burning. Inside, members of the white nationalist âalt-rightâ are celebrating their victory over anyone who wants America to be inclusive and welcoming to immigrants. A crowd of several hundred anti-fascist protesters boo and chant as Milo Yiannopoulos and âpharma broâ Martin Shkreli make their way into the âDeploraBall.â
I watch two women in white robes enter the party.
Later, an anti-fascist protester pushes past me and says, âIt was better when there were less media people around.â The attendees of the DeploraBall might agree.
After the DeploraBall, I throw on a dress and a blazer and head to the Young Republicansâ Make America Great Again Ball. (Mood ring: A swirl of black, purple, turquoise, and brown. âSad,â âexcited,â âflirty,â and also âcrabby.â Really I just feel like I want to walk into traffic.) It is mostly white people. The DJ plays a BeyoncĂŠ track, which is an odd choice considering the absurd conservative backlash to her Super Bowl performance, but the Young Republicans dance to it anyway.
12:30 am, Friendship Heights, Washington, DC
Mood ring: There is no color for âwondering if my friend got killed by Nazis.â
HEIDI GROOVER: When your friend is a queer, Jewish, feminist journalist you last saw on her way to a Young Republicans party, it seems important to check in on her. Sydney and I have been texting a little throughout her time at the $100-per-ticket event. These texts mostly consist of her asking, âWHY DID I DO THIS?â Now itâs been an hour since Iâve heard anything and I am worried. I refresh her Twitter feed again.
Twenty minutes pass.
Finally, at 12:50 am, Sydney texts back. Her message: âNazis are real.â
1:30 am, Arlington, Northern Virginia
Mood ring: The color of a Naziâs swollen eye socket after he gets punched by a protester.
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: Iâm done with the Young Republicansâ MAGA Ball and I canât sleep. At the end of the night, I went outside to get an Uber home and bummed a cigarette from a guy with a fashy-looking haircut (picture Macklemore) and a pin depicting an ancient Germanic symbol for the choice between good and evil. I told him I was a reporter and asked him what he thought about the alt-right. He said, âOff the record?â and stupidly I replied, âOkay.â
Because I agreed to go off the record, I canât tell you anything he said. But I can tell you that it left me feeling deeply shaken. I can tell you that it made me want to remind people that science says race is just a social construct, that Nazi attempts at eugenics were wrong and horrifying, and that contemporary conspiracy theories about Jews and the media trace back 200 years to that Russian czar desperate to consolidate power around white nationalism. It made me want to remind people that believing any of these things doesnât make a person cool or current or edgy, but instead demonstrates that the person believing these things is a weak-minded, Kool-Aid-drinking tool of fascists who is probably just looking for new ways to get laid. I want to throw up, but I canât.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20
7:30 am, somewhere near the Capitol Building
Mood ring: Again, blue, ânormal.â I am thinking of writing the manufacturer with a complaint. Sydney texts that hers is still black, sad. âDimmed,â she says, âjust like my sense of hope.â
HEIDI GROOVER: Iâm in search of a coffee shop where I can file a story. As I cross the street, a man calls me âbaby.â Getting catcalled is not new. Getting catcalled on the day an admitted sexual predator will become president feels worse than usual.
I find a coffee shop and step inside. Trump supporters and protesters are crowding in alongside each other, sipping from paper cups. I ask the barista how sheâs feeling. She replies carefully, âIâm feeling a lot of feelings.â Me, too. And they are all bad.
I make my way toward the ceremony through crowds of Trump supporters. As I wait to get through security, I meet a Boeing recruiter named Mike. Surprisingly, he tells me he was a Never Trump-er. Heâs a churchgoing guy. He voted for Mitt Romney. He doesnât like the way Trump talks or acts; the âpussy grabbingâ tape was âhorrifying.â But heâs still hopeful. âIf our leaders are guided,â he tells me, he thinks everything will be okay. He says he attended Barack Obamaâs inauguration, too. Heâs planning to post a photo of himself at todayâs inauguration on Facebook, but heâs worried about the anti-Trump backlash in his feed. So he thinks he might post a side-by-side of both ceremonies. âI just wish there was more tolerance on both sides,â he says.
By late morning, Iâm at the US Capitol Building for the swearing in. The crowd here is smaller than other recent inaugurations, but the people around me in this cordoned-off section of the crowd near the Capitol Building donât know that. On a big screen, they see an aerial view of the National Mall and cheer. They see Melania Trump and the Trump kids and cheer. They see Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and boo.
A lone woman in the crowd near me wears a purple pussy hat. She shouts âYes we canâ and two small, fidgety children in bright green jackets heckle her. âYouâre an idiot,â one of the kids yells. âYouâre a child,â she replies. âYes,â he said, âbut at least Iâm smart.â The adults nearby love this.
Trump arrives, takes the oath, and delivers his vengeful, âAmerica firstâ inaugural address. The lines that focus on isolationism and American exceptionalismââyour country,â âAmerica first,â âbuy American and hire Americanââwin huge applause.
Throughout the speech, some of the most enthusiastic shouts and cheers around me come from women. They appear almost entirely white; presumably, they were part of the 53 percent of white women who voted for Trump in November. They looked past the pussy grabbing, looked past his call to punish women who have abortions, looked past âslobâ and âpigâ and âdogâ and âblood coming out of her wherever,â looked past racism and xenophobia. They either looked past it or actively welcomed it.
When Trump promises, âWe will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it,â a woman behind me in a red jacket and American flag scarf shouts, âThank youuu!â
âYou will never be ignored again,â he says, as if heâs answering her directly.
âWe will make America proud again,â Trump says. âWe will make America safe again.â And then comes what theyâve been waiting for. The crowd shouts along with him: âMake! America! Great! Again!â Chants break outââTrump! Trump! Trump!â âUSA! USA! USA!ââand then itâs over.
I ask the woman in the American flag scarf to talk but she doesnât want to. Another woman nearby, a broker from New Jersey, tells me sheâs been âignoredâ and asked to âshare my wealthâ for the last eight years. She says it is harder to be white in America today than in the past. âEveryone says white people are bad people,â she says.
11:58 am, intersection of L and 12th Streets
Mood ring: Black and purple. Purple means âexcited.â Oh boy.
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: While Heidi is watching the inauguration, Iâve been following the morningâs demonstrations, from No DAPL water protectors who shut down an inauguration entry point to a group of âDisruptJ20â protesters who have attracted the attention of riot police. By the time I catch up with another contingent of DisruptJ20 protesters, about 50 of them have been kettled into a building entrance on L and 12th Streets by rows and rows of Metropolitan Police Department officers.
A bystander tells me that the people who have been kettled across the street had caused some property damage earlier, but I wasnât there to witness it. (By the end of the day, itâs revealed that the windows of a Starbucks, a Bank of America, a Wells Fargo, and a McDonaldâs have been smashed.) More protesters are showing up to support those who have been kettled. They shout, âFuck the police!â and âLet them go!â Police unfurl crime scene tape to keep journalists and protesters away. No one messes with the tape while Iâm there, but police dispatch a row of riot police with pepper spray canisters and batons to face us anyway. They shout at us to step back as they march closer to the tape. Meanwhile, the protesters who have been kettled are being arrested one by one. Theyâre led off by zip cuffs and put into arrest vans. Every time another protester gets peeled off from the group, the other protesters around the intersection cheer.
At one point, it looks like riot police outnumber protesters by about three to one. Then more protesters show up to witness the mass arrest. Hundreds of people now surround the area.
By 12:30 pm, the arrests are still proceeding slowly and the protesters have been chanting âBlack Lives Matter!â and anti-capitalist slogans for hours. I duck into a burger place across the street to file a piece. An hour later, Iâm done filing and back on the street and protesters are chanting, âHands up, donât shoot!â There are even more protesters than there were before, and I canât see whatâs happening at the very front of the crowd.
If I didnât capture on video what happened next, it would surely be a blur. Riot police charge the crowd of reporters and protesters with pepper spray. Many reporters and photographers stay up front to capture the scene while protesters run in the opposite direction. Police pepper spray the face of a man taking pictures on top of an elementary school sign; when he falls off, medics run to help him. Meanwhile, pink tear gas grenades go off in front of the crowd. A protester throws a glass bottle at the line of riot police, who start to advance down 12th Street toward protesters. At that point, riot police start using flash-bang grenades, which send even more people running down 12th.
At the next intersection, black bloc protesters break up pieces of asphalt and start throwing the chunks at police. I watch one black bloc protester take a brick off a building and use that, too. Police are throwing flash bangs and tear gas grenades left and right, and protesters erect a barricade of newspaper boxes on K Street. Another line of riot cops advances from the other side of 12th Street. Two men in âMake America Great Againâ hats watching the scene unfold from the edge of the intersection give me a âthumbs upâ sign as I film them. Later, another reporter tells me that the two men I filmed commented that the people protesting belonged in gas chambers.
All of the sudden I hear a thud. When I run over, a reporter is on the ground and appears to be unconscious. He comes to in a few seconds and is briefly confused. His phone is smashed. Later, he tells another reporter that he got punched and fell. Medics and bystanders urge him to sit down, but he whips out his notepad and continues to write. When police advance down 12th Street, I watch them brusquely push another reporter out of a building entrance and toward the crowd. Earlier in the day, riot police pushed Washington Post reporter Dalton Bennett to the ground while he covered the same protest.
Later, in Franklin Square, behind a National Guard truck and directly adjacent to the clash between police and protesters, two 14-year-old boys stand quietly with signs that read, âDump Trumpâ and âTiny man, tiny hands, tiny ideas.â Aaron Long and Marquis Crawford go to Hardy Middle School in Georgetown in DC. They say that when some Trump supporters saw their signs, they shouted âFuck you!â and âYou suck!â at the teens.
âSeeing people throw stuff at cop cars and busting windows, thatâs kind of scary, you know, you donât see that every day,â Long says. â[But] the thing of people protesting and having their voices heard, that gives you a little bit of hope. Itâs a huge thing. Itâs not going to make Trump go away, but protesting is letting your voice get heard.â
Our conversation is interrupted by a crowd of people running into the park, away from pepper spray or tear gas. Crawford and Long disappear with their chaperone, but minutes later theyâre back at the same spot, silently holding their signs.
I take a break to go charge my electronics, but the cafe Iâm sitting in soon fills with the smell of burning rubber. I run outside toward the smoke.
On the street, protesters run in one direction; a woman in a glossy fur coat who appears wholly undisturbed saunters down the street in the opposite direction. I make my way through the crowd and find the source of the smoke. A limousine has been set on fire.
By 5 pm, Iâm back in Franklin Square. Punk bands are playing and riot police are still confronting protesters near the park. Things appear to be winding down as the sky darkens. I smoke a cigarette with a friend (and fellow reporter) who did me several favors by pulling me out of the way of flash-bang grenades and pepper spray when I tried to Facebook Live the earlier action.
I am consumed with gratitude for my friend, who, as a woman of color, faces more threats to her safety under a Trump administration than any of the white black bloc bros throwing rocks that dayâor me, for that matter.
We smoke in silence.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21
8 am, along Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol Building
Mood ring: A swirl of purple, green, and yellow, which means, letâs see, âgood, excited, falling in loveââgreat!â and also âmischievous, anxious, nervous, worried.â Oh.
HEIDI GROOVER: The existential hangover I have from Friday is worse than any actual hangover Iâve ever had. Last night, after checking in on the black bloc-ers one final time, I stopped in an overpriced basement bar for a whiskey. I sat at the counter and mindlessly scrolled through social media. On Instagram, someone had posted Trumpâs âI moved on her like a bitchâ quote. It hit me in a way I wasnât prepared for. My face felt hot; I stared up toward the ceiling trying not to cry. The bartender passed by and asked, âHow was your day, darlinâ?â âOkay,â I said. âJust okay?â he asked. âWell, Donald Trump is president,â I said. His response was quick. Both Trump and Hillary Clinton were equally bad, he told me. Trump is a bigot, he said, but Clinton acts as if sheâs above the law. Neither of those are what the country needs. âAmerica should just be single for a while,â he said. I didnât feel like arguing.
When I woke up this morning, I was still feeling that sense of defeat. Things begin to shift on the Metro when I hear two women from Ontario say theyâre in town for the Womenâs March. âWhat affects you affects us,â one of them says to a woman from New York who is also headed to the march.
By 2 pm, the National Mall and the streets surrounding it are packed with hundreds of thousands of people. There are anti-Trump, pro-woman signs, and âpussy hatsâ as far as I can see. Signs declare, âWomenâs rights are human rightsâ and âGirls just want to have fun(damental rights).â Marchers chant, âMy body, my choice! Her body, her choice!â and âWe want a leader, not a creepy tweeter.â
Despite being an early obstacle for the event and its organizers, racial diversity is on display. âThis is a womenâs march, and this womenâs march represents the promise of feminism as against the pernicious powers of state violence,â the activist Angela Davis tells the crowd. âAn inclusive and intersectional feminism that calls upon all of us to join the resistance to racism, to Islamophobia, to anti-Semitism, to misogyny, to capitalist exploitation.â
As I stand on a traffic light post taking photos and video, I talk to Selina Vickers, who came to the march from West Virginia. Vickers is holding a sign on which sheâs written a quote attributed to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders: âPeople say all the Trump supporters are idiots! Theyâre not! Theyâre in pain! They are hurting! And we damn well better stand up for them!â
As âa product of the Bernie revolutionâ she tells me that âwe have to find common groundâ with average Trump voters. â[Trumpâs] ego is so big and he wants good ratings,â Vickers says. âIf we work together with the average Trump voter, we can make him a good president.â I admire her optimism, but Iâm not convinced.
Soon, so many people flood the area that the march canât actually move as planned. We are stuck for a while before the crowds spill out all over downtown. Hundreds end up as close as they can get to the White House and leave the signs they brought propped up against the White House lawn fence. Two blocks away, a Trump-themed float tries to make its way through the crowd. Theyâre surrounded by chants: âWe! Are! The popular vote!â
3:30 pm, along the National Mall near the Smithsonian
Mood ring: Black, with maybe a glimmer of something that isnât.
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: Cell service is terrible, dense crowds are everywhere, and my legs hurt. Iâve been taking pictures of peopleâs signs all day and conducting short interviews, but at a certain point I decide to shift objectives. My little sister, who I havenât seen in more than a year, made a last-minute decision to come down to DC for the Womenâs March. Amid half a million people, I try to find her.
Only half the texts I send to my sister are actually received, but we finally agree to meet at the Washington Monument. She tells me sheâs by the 14th and Madison sign. There are four 14th and Madison signs. I choose a random one to stand by and resign myself to the idea that I might not find my sister among the 500 or so people crowding this one intersection alone. Miraculously, my sisterâs friend spots me.
âSydney!â My sister looks exhausted, but happy. Sheâs been marching all day. Right now Iâm so proud of her I could cry.
My sister shows me the chants she and her friends have been using.
âFire it up!â she shouts.
âFire it up!â the crowd responds.
âReady to go!â she shouts again.
âReady to go!â
Fuck it. I tuck my press credentials into my jacket and link arms with my sister.
âWHOSE STREETS?â I yell. My sister and the crowd shout back: âOUR STREETS!â
4 pm, an oyster bar called Pennsylvania 6
Mood ring: Very black, the blackest.
HEIDI GROOVER: As it gets dimmer outside, my hands are freezing. I need to find somewhere inside to sit. Every fast food restaurant I see is filled with people and has a line out the door. I see a swanky oyster bar and slink into the one open seat at the bar. I wonder if this place is too expensive to put on our bossâs credit card [Ed note: yeah, probably] but I am too cold and tired to care.
The bartender is frazzled. They werenât expecting this, he saysâespecially coming off the chaos of yesterday, when protesters lit a limo on fire right outside this place. I look up at CNN. Theyâre talking about the dayâs massive women-led, women-focused protests. Theyâve invited a man, Michael Moore, on to talk about it.
Afterward, I cross Franklin Square, a gathering spot for protesters all weekend, and enter Almas Temple, where people from Socialist Alternative, the Green Party, Occupy Wall Street, the Movement for the 99%, and Jill Steinâs campaign are all hosting an event called âInaugurate the Resistance.â (Mood: Socialist Alternative Redâ˘.)
Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, the star of the national Socialist Alternative party, is set to speak. So is Stein, whom Sawant backed in November. Theyâre joined by Standing Rock Sioux member Chase Iron Eyes and Tim Canova, who ran against embattled Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Floridaâs primary election last year. They all rail against capitalism, the media, and the Democratic Party. Some, like Canova, want to reform the party from the inside. Others, like Stein and Sawant, want to build an entirely separate party. âThis election, I think, was no surprise,â Stein says, calling for ranked choice voting and allowing third-party candidates to participate in presidential debates.
Sawant delivers a version of her official response to Trumpâs inaugural address. She warns against creating âfalse equivalencies between Republicans and Democratsâ but says she does not believe the Democratic Party can be reformed from within.
âMerely protesting will not be enough,â Sawant says. Then she calls for âmass nonviolent civil disobedienceâ on March 8 (International Womenâs Day) and May Day. I write in my notebook: â1. Says protest not enough to stop Trump. 2. Calls for protests to stop Trump.â
As she finishes her remarks, Sawant says sheâs drawing hope right now from young activists. âWe need a radically different society,â she tells the room. âWe need socialism.â The crowd gives her a standing ovation.
5:41 pm, Dupont Circle
Mood ring: Black and brown. âSadâ and âcrabby.â I think this is my baseline setting.
SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: Iâm back at my sisterâs friendâs place, and people are hushed around the TV. Sean Spicer is about to give a briefing about the unprecedented Womenâs Marches around the country, or so we think.
Instead, Spicerâwho I later find out has had a multi-year Twitter feud with Dippinâ Dots ice cream treatsâtakes the podium and proceeds to lie. Blatantly. To the entire country. He claims that media distorted the size of Trumpâs inaugural crowd (false), that the attendance was the largest to ever witness an inauguration (also false). He calls the media shameful.
âThereâs been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable,â Spicer says. âAnd Iâm here to tell you that it goes two ways. Weâre going to hold the press accountable, as well.â
The people Iâm with giggle about how puerile the whole thing seems. âMy party was bigger than the other party because I said so!â someone snickers, lampooning Trumpâs priorities. But I donât laugh. Iâm silent and furious. The briefing isnât about crowd size. Itâs nothing less than a declaration of war on journalists, facts, and truth.
Thereâs no such thing as an executive branch of government âholding the press accountable.â When the executive branch controls the press, thatâs called authoritarianism. âThe job of the White House press office is no longer to inform the American people, but to bend reality to glorify the Great Leaderâs ego,â Adam Serwer, a senior editor at the Atlantic, tweets. âStatements like the one Spicer just gave are why access journalism does not matter in the age of Trump,â ProPublicaâs Jessica Huseman adds. âInvestigative journalism matters.â
Later, Trumpâs administration will claim that Spicer simply had âalternative facts,â which only makes sense if you believe words have no meaning and there is no such thing as a fact. The left is not immune from this kind of thinking. During the election, liberals were also guilty of relying heavily on clickbait-y âfake newsâ sources that merely reaffirmed what they already believed.
If I flew to DC feeling sick and lost, Spicerâs briefing makes me realize that I will leave DC feeling sick and angry. The principles that I believe in are under attack from all sides, and a Trump administration calls for journalists to be more aggressive and more accountable to our communities than ever.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 22
11:30 am, Grand Hyatt Washington
Mood ring: Spilled hot coffee on myself, which made the ring go bright purple ââFeeling good!â
HEIDI GROOVER: In a big conference room in the basement of this hotel, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is telling a crowd of several hundred women, âIf people didnât know until now that we are in the majority and we are not silent, they certainly found out yesterday!â
Jayapal, the first South Asian woman elected to the US House of Representatives, has been on the job for about three weeks but is already rising to prominence on the left. Endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Jayapal is the epitome of what many Democrats say the future of their party should be: a former immigration activist, a savvy organizer, an unapologetic progressive. Speaking to the crowd at this pro-choice event organized by EMILYâs List, itâs clear that Jayapal knows how to get already-progressive voters excited about politics. But now she must translate her grassroots organizing cred into success in Congress.
In an interview after her EMILYâs List speech at the hotel, Jayapal rightly acknowledges Democrats are unlikely to win legislative victories in her first term. Instead, she says, they have to win hearts and minds. If she can successfully fire up blue voters, she says, sheâll ask them to call the people they know in red districts. Itâs those constituents, she says, who can pressure their lawmakers to change.
Jayapal has already put these tactics into practice. During her first week in Congress, Jayapal participated in a last-ditch effort to block the electoral college vote making Donald Trump president. A week later, she held a rally in defense of the Affordable Care Act. On Trumpâs inauguration day, Jayapal skipped the ceremony to attend a roundtable with undocumented immigrants in her district. On Saturday, she marched in the Womenâs March here in Washington, DC.
Jayapal sees these actions as ways of renewing the leftist enthusiasm needed to take back control in the Capitol.
âWe have to be unapologetic about our platform,â Jayapal says, pointing to Arizona, where Trump won but voters also increased the minimum wage. âThis is not a choice for the Democratic Party of identity politics versus economics. They are deeply intertwined. Everybody wants the same things for our future and everybody wants a place to standâeven some of the people who voted for Trump. We have to recognize that itâs our job to bind those deeply together.â
MONDAY, JANUARY 23
12:10 pm, Dupont Circle
Mood rings: Black and black.
HEIDI GROOVER AND SYDNEY BROWNSTONE: After the tumultuous weekend, DC appears to have gone back to normal, whatever the new ânormalâ means. People have gone back to work, the Metro is running with less crowded trains, and lobbyists are having meetings at the coffee shop where weâre filing this piece. But underneath the surface, we know that something profound has shifted: We know that in 2017 America, facts are now devalued, journalists are the enemy, and racists are unafraid. History books will be written on what this means. But for now, for our own sanity, thereâs only one way to think about it: that all this means is that the self-styled âresistanceâ has more work to do than ever. We have one another, and we have to be grateful for that much. It will have to be enough to carry us through the next four years.