As I watched President Donald Trump’s inauguration last week, I couldn’t help but think about the old Black proverb my parents and grandparents repeated time and time again growing up: We tried to tell y’all.
Add to that the famous political maxim that elections have consequences and you should have some idea of how the day went and what’s in store for our American democracy.
Now let’s be very clear, while there’s a lot to talk about from yesterday’s events from Trump’s official and unofficial Inaugural Addresses to his day one executive orders and pardons, the peaceful transfer of power is always a beautiful thing, particularly since we’re only four year past the January 6 insurrection where the MAGA mob attacked the Capitol in a last ditch attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
But that beauty was only skin deep as Trump chose divisiveness and dog whistles instead of using this remarkable opportunity to bring us together as a nation or even lay out a real plan for how he intends to deliver on his long line of campaign promises.
He could have outlined real solutions to lower grocery prices, cut housing costs or address any of the real issues working families across America face every day. Instead, he made false claims about violent crime, disaster response and more while pledging to rename the Gulf of Mexico and “take back” the Panama Canal.
What does the Gulf of Mexico have to do with grocery prices, you ask. Absolutely nothing.
Then, after serving up the reddest of red meat to a crowd of supporters complete with more threats and conspiracy theories, Trump proceed to sign roughly 200 executive orders, memoranda and proclamations that not only rescinded much of the progress we’ve made over the past four years but also pardoned 1,500 people charged in the insurrection and commuted the sentences of leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
With one stroke of the pen, Trump ended federal prohibitions of sex discrimination, reinstated private prisons and tried to end the birthright citizenship that’s been enshrined in our constitution since 1787.
He said federal employees no longer have to sign an ethics pledge. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and World Health Organizations. He launched new attacks on federal employees, ended federal efforts to end systemic racism and mandate pay equity and ended the program that’s been successfully lowering drug prices for Americans.
Like I said, we tried to tell y’all.
Since then, Trump has made his intentions even clearer executing the Project 2025 paybook he claimed to know nothing about and it has nothing to do with lowering the price of eggs. He illegally firedthe independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies. He’s launched reckless ICE raids which, among other things, have falsely arrested American citizens. He shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. He reversed a 60-year-old, Johnson-era executive order that prohibited federal contractors from engaging in employment discrimination. He stopped the stopped all Department of Justice civil rights investigations and police reform agreements including the agreements in Louisville, KY and Minneapolis, MN reached following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Trump also fired every DOJ official who worked on any of the myriad investigations against him while disrupting the lives of millions of Americans by stopping payment of all federal loans and grants. You know that grant you were counting on for your small business or that federal student loan that helps your kid pay tuition? I know it was already approved. But it’s not coming. Trump said so.
Meanwhile the price of eggs is soaring and they’re only going up.
Like I said, we tried to tell y’all.
Now, let’s be clear. It’s ugly folks. As bad as we thought the 2025 Trump Administration was going to be, this is worse. Furthermore, while the Black community and other minorities are taking the brunt of it, the pain nis being felt in working families across the board.
You know that bridge that was finally getting replaced or that riad that was finally getting widened? Well, President Trump just stopped funding for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Do you have one of the more than 330,000 clean energy jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act? Look again, Trump just froze your paycheck.
But as much as I’m harping on how we tried to tell y’all, our reaction to these unconstitutional, unAmerican and downright illegal MAGA moves can’t just be a collective “told you so.” We have to act swiftly and decisively and we have to do it where it matters: on the ground.
Social media is great and sounding off on cable news sure is fun, but if we want to protect ourselves, our families and our nation from MAGA run amuck, we can’t do it with commentary or symbolic gestures.
We have to step up to the plate and we have to be strategic. Trump wanting to buy Greenland or change the name of the Gulf of Mexico may seem like low-hanging fruit, but it’s just a distraction. At the end of the day, it doesn’t mean anything and we need to stay focused if we want to make a difference.
Finally, the organization, the outcry and the solutions have to come from us. Don’t get me wrong, I spend a fair amount of time in Washington D.C. and there are a lot of good folks with good ideas inside the beltway. But our answers have to be bigger than that. We have to hear from the grassroots and rally around community-driven actions or risk being dismissed as politics as usual.
You see, this isn’t about party or even politics. This is about us. This is our lives and our families on the line both as individuals and as a people. It’s time for all of us to lead because, if history has shown us anything, it’s that we can try to tell folks all we want. It doesn’t matter unless we do something.
Like Thomas Paine said, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Antjuan Seawright is a Democratic political strategist, founder and CEO of Blueprint Strategy LLC and a senior visiting fellow at Third Way. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter @antjuansea.