We’re always fascinated by people who make it their business to jump out of airplanes, drive in car races or risk thousands in the stock market. Why is risk a way of life for some, and for others, it’s all about avoiding risk at all cost?
The psychology of risk assumes that there are different kinds of risks. For some, risk-taking reduces boredom. For others, it’s a means to an end — a necessary evil in order to gain something better. Risk describes a wide array of motivations and incentives.
One type of risk taker is the sensation seeker. They need the rush they experience when doing something dangerous; from mountain climbing and skydiving to drugs and gambling to day trading in the stock market. Risks can be reckless (such as drugs), or reasonably undertaken (as with the relative safety of organized car racing). But sensation and excitement are the motivation for all.
Interestingly, risk-taking personalities are the exact opposite of those who suffer from depression. Clinically depressed people hold negative assumptions about virtually everything. They assume that it’s not possible to get what you want in life; that people are not to be trusted, and that no matter how careful they are, their endeavors won’t turn out well. Conversely, risk takers minimize the possibility that things might not go well, and focus on what might go well. Depressed people often focus on luck or fate. Risk takers are more concerned with exercising control over their environment.
Seeking that rush can be reckless. Some people drink too much and drive like maniacs. Cautious risk takers approach extreme hobbies such as surfing, skiing, skydiving and gun collecting with intelligence and responsibility. The difference? While some blindly go by the seat of their pants, rational risk takers plan for and try to guard against the attendant dangers.
Intelligent risk taking is mentally healthy. “No pain, no gain” actually means, “No risk taken, no possibility of gain.” I spend a lot of time trying to convince clinically depressed people to think more like this.
Marvin Zuckerman, Ph.D., a researcher commenting on risk in Psychology Today, agrees. “Although risk taking has negative aspects…, it is a positive force as well. Without risk, humanity would stagnate; there would be little impetus for discovery.” He’s right. Every forward step in history involves someone taking a risk. What’s true for mankind is equally true for individuals: In order to accomplish something we want, we have to take chances. If we don’t, we’ll never know if we could have achieved our goal.
You want a nicer house? Or a medical degree? Or a new romantic partner? Then you figure out how to go about it. If you discover you can’t, then you have to accept reality. But if you can, you proceed without letting fear hold you back. Risk takers trust their intelligence to figure out what does and what doesn’t make sense. And then they act. Depressed people become paralyzed with fear, never progressing into the realm of action. Foregoing all risks, they’re rewarded with nothing more than paralysis and depression.
The depressed person thinks, “I don’t want to make a mistake. So I’ll stay put.” The risk taker says, “I’m going to assume it can go well until there’s good evidence to the contrary.” To the non-risk taker, that attitude seems downright crazy. Yet the typical risk taker will tell you that when the process is carefully thought out, things generally go better than expected. Even in the midst of failure or disappointment, the risk taker feels like he or she is at least living life rather than hiding from it.
Risk gets a bad name because it gets lumped with sensation-seeking. But they aren’t the same. Diving out of airplanes and the like are fine for people who pursue these activities intelligently and rationally, but they are far from being life requirements. On the other hand, neurotically avoiding reasonable day-to-day challenges can be an even greater risk to your psychological health.
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Longtime TV host and bestselling author Bill O’Reilly said the Democratic Party is “on the verge of collapse” after the taunting they took from President Donald Trump led to a “myriad of mistakes.”
O’Reilly made the comments in an interview on NewsNation on Thursday night.
“He taunted the Democratic Party into making a myriad of mistakes,” O’Reilly said on “Cuomo,” referring to Democrats’ lack of decorum during Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was ejected from the chamber and subsequently censured on Thursday, with 10 Democrats voting to reprimand their colleague. Roughly a dozen progressives held signs, walked out of the chamber and refused to clap for anything. Democrats even refused to acknowledge a 13-year-old cancer survivor who Trump honored during the speech.
“I think the Democratic Party is on the verge of collapse,” O’Reilly said.
Remember when the phrase ‘the Resistance’ would conjure up visions of sexy French youths in berets battling actual Nazis? Now all it brings to mind is ageing dullards in pink suits holding up signs saying ‘This is not normal’ while sporting the most turbo-smug look on their faces. As US president Donald Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress last night, ‘across the aisle the Resistance was stirring’, gushed the Guardian’s DC reporter. His piece was illustrated with a pic of some congresswoman in pearls and a balding Democrat looking aghast as Trump talked. Seriously, if this is ‘the Resistance’, the world’s tyrants can rest easy.
Yesterday’s ‘Democrat fightback’ and ‘resistance to Trump’s rhetoric’ – journalists are literally calling it that – was next-level cringe. It occurred during Trump’s 100-minute speech, the longest Congress talk in 60 years. As Trump bashed Joe Biden and bigged up Elon Musk, the Dems came over all soixante-huitard. Fury coursed through their ranks. Then the revolt started. The Squad’s Rashida Tlaib held up a scrawled sign saying ‘That’s a lie!’. Dem representative Al Green ‘shook his cane and pointed his finger’ and cried ‘You have no mandate’ to cut Medicaid. How the regime must have quaked at the sight of this revolution!
The way some hacks are talking about this tantrum masquerading as a protest you’d think it was a modern-day storming of the Bastille. The Dems’ ‘stirring’ acts of rebellion will have ‘given hope to the Resistance’ and sent a message to ‘the world’, said the Guardian. Nurse! Even leftists who’ve been disappointed with the Dem establishment seemed to get a moral kick from this political pantomime. So far, the ‘resistance’ to the Trumpist tyranny has been ‘splintered’, but now we know it’s ‘getting better’, fawned Vox. Perhaps, it said, we’ll soon see the ‘aggressive resistance’ we really need.
Can these people hear themselves? Overpaid politicians holding up mass-produced black placards with hackneyed complaints like ‘False’ and ‘Liar’ are not ‘the Resistance’ – they’re the establishment cosplaying as campus radicals for likes and headlines. In one especially squirming scene, some Dems ‘removed their outer business wear’ to reveal black t-shirts with the word ‘RESIST’ in ‘bold white letters’. Their delusions of radicalism are off the scale. Resistance is when young Iranian women rip off their hijabs or Kurdish revolutionaries fight the neo-fascists of ISIS, not when politicians on $174,000 a year put on a t-shirt their stressed intern ordered from some hip printer on 7th Street.
This wasn’t an uprising – it was an orgy of vanity. The Democrat benches were a sea of self-satisfaction. The face of every member of this ‘Resistance’ was etched with pride as they held up their dumb signs mocking Musk or branding Trump a liar (original!). The revolting Dems have ‘shown the world what they are against’ – now they need to show us ‘what they are for’, said the Guardian. I’ll tell you what they’re for: themselves. They co-opted the paraphernalia of protest to make a garish display of their own virtue.
Remember when the phrase ‘the Resistance’ would conjure up visions of sexy French youths in berets battling actual Nazis? Now all it brings to mind is ageing dullards in pink suits holding up signs saying ‘This is not normal’ while sporting the most turbo-smug look on their faces. As US president Donald Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress last night, ‘across the aisle the Resistance was stirring’, gushed the Guardian’s DC reporter. His piece was illustrated with a pic of some congresswoman in pearls and a balding Democrat looking aghast as Trump talked. Seriously, if this is ‘the Resistance’, the world’s tyrants can rest easy.
Yesterday’s ‘Democrat fightback’ and ‘resistance to Trump’s rhetoric’ – journalists are literally calling it that – was next-level cringe. It occurred during Trump’s 100-minute speech, the longest Congress talk in 60 years. As Trump bashed Joe Biden and bigged up Elon Musk, the Dems came over all soixante-huitard. Fury coursed through their ranks. Then the revolt started. The Squad’s Rashida Tlaib held up a scrawled sign saying ‘That’s a lie!’. Dem representative Al Green ‘shook his cane and pointed his finger’ and cried ‘You have no mandate’ to cut Medicaid. How the regime must have quaked at the sight of this revolution!
The way some hacks are talking about this tantrum masquerading as a protest you’d think it was a modern-day storming of the Bastille. The Dems’ ‘stirring’ acts of rebellion will have ‘given hope to the Resistance’ and sent a message to ‘the world’, said the Guardian. Nurse! Even leftists who’ve been disappointed with the Dem establishment seemed to get a moral kick from this political pantomime. So far, the ‘resistance’ to the Trumpist tyranny has been ‘splintered’, but now we know it’s ‘getting better’, fawned Vox. Perhaps, it said, we’ll soon see the ‘aggressive resistance’ we really need.
Can these people hear themselves? Overpaid politicians holding up mass-produced black placards with hackneyed complaints like ‘False’ and ‘Liar’ are not ‘the Resistance’ – they’re the establishment cosplaying as campus radicals for likes and headlines. In one especially squirming scene, some Dems ‘removed their outer business wear’ to reveal black t-shirts with the word ‘RESIST’ in ‘bold white letters’. Their delusions of radicalism are off the scale. Resistance is when young Iranian women rip off their hijabs or Kurdish revolutionaries fight the neo-fascists of ISIS, not when politicians on $174,000 a year put on a t-shirt their stressed intern ordered from some hip printer on 7th Street.
This wasn’t an uprising – it was an orgy of vanity. The Democrat benches were a sea of self-satisfaction. The face of every member of this ‘Resistance’ was etched with pride as they held up their dumb signs mocking Musk or branding Trump a liar (original!). The revolting Dems have ‘shown the world what they are against’ – now they need to show us ‘what they are for’, said the Guardian. I’ll tell you what they’re for: themselves. They co-opted the paraphernalia of protest to make a garish display of their own virtue.
There was rank hypocrisy, too. Some of the Democratic congresswomen sported pink suits to signal their fury with Trump’s ‘sexist’ policies that negatively impact women. Hold on – didn’t the Dems just torpedo a Republican bill that would have forbidden blokes (‘transwomen’) from taking part in women’s sport? Literally the day before the Democrats brought a ‘wave of pink’ to Congress, they shot down a bill that would have preserved the liberty and dignity of women and girls who just want to play sport without some hulking fella pushing them around. Honestly, Trump is Betty Friedan reincarnate in comparison with these woke wreckers of women’s rights.
Rarely has the gulf between the elite’s virtue-signalling and its real-world destructive behaviour been so starkly illustrated. These congresswomen sign the death warrant of female sports one day and then swan around in pink the next to show what feminist bravehearts they are. These are incalculable levels of cant. If you think we’re going to take lectures on women’s rights from a political class that will happily sacrifice a girl’s right to sport in order to placate their own Oberlin-attending offspring, you’ve got another thing coming.
This preening display exposed the truth about ‘the Resistance’. It was always the establishment larping as rebels, shamelessly plundering the history and the style of protest to add a gloss of legitimacy to their pursuit of their own class interests in the populist era. From those coastal movers and shakers who wore pink pussy hats to the Ivy League radicals who shouted ‘Nazi!’ every time they heard the name Trump, this was the elite mourning its waning cultural power, not a revolt against The Man. ‘The Resistance’ is The Man. I knew that eight years ago when Stylist magazine gushed that Hillary Clinton had joined the resistance. I mean, come on.
The smug wailing in Congress sounded to me like the death rattle of ‘the Resistance’. These were the last gasps, I hope, of the ancien regime. At some point they’re going to have to fess up to the fact that the real rebels in America are those tens of millions of working people who voted for the overthrow of the old politics, not the pampered muppets defending that old politics. Can we have the word ‘resistance’ back now, please? It’s too important to let it be stolen by a knackered old ruling class that has the gall to disguise its ruthless self-interest as glorious rebellion.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
John Podesta, Biden’s top climate czar, was in charge of doling out $375 billion in climate change spending, which had been sent to many charities founded only months ago.
The Biden administration funneled at least $20 billion dollars into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded, The Post has discovered.
In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 billion to Bethesda, Maryland, based group Climate United Fund, which does not appear in the IRS’s charities database, and has no federal filings.
in 2024, EPA adviser Brent Efron was caught on video saying the environmental regulatory agency had rushed out its $20 billion in climate funding.
“Get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump administration] come in … it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge,” Efron said in a video posted by Project Veritas.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said on the Alex Marlow Show that he is working with the FBI and DOJ on the eight groups tied to the “gold bars” scheme:
Zeldin said that “the director of the greenhouse reduction fund left an NGO to come to the Biden administration, becomes the director of the greenhouse reduction fund, and gave their former employer $5 billion.”
He noted that one CEO who applied for a $20 million grant sat on the Biden White House environmental justice council, which had only received $3 million over the prior three years.
The EPA had uncovered that $2 billion was set aside for a climate change group, Power Forward Communities, which is associated with Democrat Stacey Abrams, even though the organization had only reported $100 in revenue.
“We want to reestablish more oversight controls. We want to have accountability over every penny. I want to have the ability to sit before Congress and you can ask me 20 of your top questions, and I want to have answers for every single one of them on top of my head,” Zeldin continued, sharing his desire to have maximum transparency over agency spending.
The release of Conclave mere weeks before the U.S. presidential election is no accident. This is a movie about the high-stakes, contentious selection process of a new leader at a time of widening political division. The drama of Conclave includes candidates, campaigning, endorsements, ballot boxes, a “college” of electors, secret conversations in dimly lit halls of power, and even jarring attempts to undermine the democratic process. Sure, Conclave isn’t about selecting a new president; it’s about selecting a new pope. But the parallels are obvious and intentional.
Directed by Edward Berger and adapted from the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, Conclave seems to suggest the contemporary Roman Catholic Church is just as corrupt and broken as American democracy, and just as driven by the egos of overconfident men and their appetites for power. While it makes some fair points, in the end Conclave’s potency is compromised by its inability to conceal clear bias in a certain direction.
Electoral Parallels
I enjoyed Berger’s last film, 2022’s Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. But that film was heavy-handed in forcing its point in unsubtle ways. Unfortunately, the same tendency bogs down Conclave.
The fictional film follows a papal conclave that happens in the wake of a beloved pope’s death. Most of the drama takes place within the Vatican’s walls as the College of Cardinals gathers to elect a new bishop of Rome. The cardinals spend several days going through multiple secret ballot votes until a candidate wins at least a two-thirds majority of votes. All of it is totally hidden from the public and the press, save the black or white smoke that emanates from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney, indicating a failed vote or successful election of a new pope.
Sure, Conclave isn’t about selecting a new president; it’s about selecting a new pope. But the parallels are obvious and intentional.
Much of this is interesting to watch, even as a Protestant believer who finds the papacy and the Roman Catholic idea of apostolic succession unbiblical. The film’s inside look at such a secretive but long-held tradition is Conclave’s greatest strength.
A troupe of excellent actors enhances the drama’s prestige: The excellent Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, who presides over the conclave and allies with liberal cardinals like Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci). Both are contenders to be the next pope, as are Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) and Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati). The film is at its best when it subtly observes these men’s characters and allows the audience to discern their integrity (or lack thereof), particularly whether they’re more defined by humility or ambition.
Many times, though, the film oversells its political parallels. One character says, “I feel like I’m at some American political convention.” Another makes a comment obviously directed straight at the American viewer in 2024: “Is this what we’re reduced to, voting for the least-worst option?”
The conclave’s primary factions fall roughly along a progressive/conservative split that mirrors American politics. To be sure, there is a divide in the Catholic Church between those who prioritize conserving tradition and those who seek an updated, more inclusive church. But in Conclave, this split doesn’t concern theology as much as it does the issues driving American politics.
One giveaway is the character Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), the Trump-esque conservative candidate campaigning on a platform of traditionalism and nationalism (essentially “Make the papacy Italian again!”). He has an ostentatious swagger about him and doesn’t mince words as he critiques the previous pope and decries encroaching liberalism. When incidents of Islamist terror happen outside the Vatican walls over the course of the conclave, Tedesco uses the opportunity to ratchet up the us-versus-them rhetoric his liberal opponents despise.
The liberal cardinals respond to Tedesco in the way American progressives respond to Trump. They say things like “We liberals have to unite against him!” and “It’s a war!” They argue a Tedesco victory would undo decades of progress and send Rome back to the dark ages.
Watching Conclave, it’s hard to imagine actual cardinals talking about one another in these ways, demonizing “the other side” with brazen partisan rhetoric. But this film doesn’t attempt to accurately reflect the Catholic Church’s reality as much as to land points about the type of Christianity it doesn’t like (traditional/conservative) and the type it hopes will prevail (progressive).
My live running commentary on social media last night during President Trump’s address to Congress:
[See the picture] This makes leftists insane. Anything that disturbs their narrative triggers their emotional meltdowns. Facts that get in the way of their dated, false and untenable beliefs — e.g., “All black people are socialists” — cause them to triple down on their many, many errors.
This Democrat pig, like everyone in his party, applauded 80 year old ladies being imprisoned indefinitely without due process for protesting the 2020 election. We should treat him much more harshly for his ridiculous outburst.
I’d like to think wokeness is gone. But wokeness is like bacteria. It will always grow, if not battled.
Confusing and exploiting children with multiple pronouns IS child abuse.
It’s fun to say “Gulf of America” to a Democrat. It drives them to make a paddle.
Laken Riley is a reminder that leftism, like all totalitarianism, is savage and inhumane. Also: Borders matter.
The PINKOS are wearing pink tonight.
“The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats is over.” Blasphemy to the Imperial City.
The Constitution never promised nor envisioned millions for LGBTQ programs in unknown African countries.
Stacey Abrams? Millions in tax money for her personal gain uncovered by Elon Musk? Time for an investigation and orange jump suit for this one.
Leftist elites in Congress: “Totalitarian Communism and fascism for thee; unlimited power and money for me.”
Men can’t play in women’s sports. How unimaginably radical! The pursing totalitarians with their little signs tremble.
“Woke no longer.”
Karma’s a bitch, leftists.
The Communists with their stupid little signs and pursed lips look like demented Puritans. Their hatred is bottomless.
DemComs have discovered their love of insurrection. Will we be arresting them?
Imagine the margin of victory in 2024 without the DemCom fraud.
Beware the Communists in pink. Beware the psychopaths with signs saying, “This is not normal.”
From FBI raids, censorship, armed IRS agents, vax mandates and lockdowns to PITIFUL little paddles. That’s why America is great.
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!
I don’t know how else to interpret this tweet by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He got bad advice from Democrats before meeting with President Trump and Vice President Vance, unfortunately tried to score points in the press through that meeting, lost the opportunity to sign the mineral development agreement, and now realizes his mistake:
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. … My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts. *** We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins. We are grateful for this.
Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.
And finally:
Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format.
So Zelensky obviously realizes his mistake, and I surmise that he now understands what bad advice the Democratic Senators gave him. But the broader point is this: President Trump will do something bold, or out of the box, and the Democrats and the commentariat will go crazy. It’s a disaster! Trump has made a horrible blunder! The world will never be the same! But if you give it a few days to let the dust settle, it turns out that there was no disaster, no fiasco, and things are proceeding just fine.
We have a ways to go before peace can be declared in Ukraine, but the effort seems to be back on the right track.
Dishonest people say Trump is cutting all research funding, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s research. It’s untrue. They know it’s untrue, but they’re hysterical about Trump and they must make up a reason. However, even if Trump DID cut 100 percent of research by the government, we’d still have it. How? From the same sources who pay for it now: the private sector. The federal government’s research is funded 100 percent by taxes, plus inflation (created by the Federal Reserve to finance the massive federal debt). If we cut the cost of government by 70 or 80 percent, and reduced inflation in the process, the demand for research would be met by the private sector.
Too many people want research for this not to happen. It’s ignorant to believe that without government, there would be no cancer or Alzheimer’s research. The truth is actually the opposite: Without a robust and rich private sector, there would be no government. Private sector research would be better, honest and not politicized. Shysters and sociopaths like Fauci would not flourish in private sector research. Getting government OUT of research would be the best thing to happen to medicine.
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!
Democrats keep trying to make federal worker victimhood happen. No matter how often they’re told it’s not happening, they keep tripling, quadrupling and decupling down on it.
Next up is Trump’s speech to Congress.
Some Senate and House Dems are planning to boycott it.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), one of the most senior Democrats in the Senate, will not attend Trump’s speech on Tuesday, Axios has learned
Neither will Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who will instead host an online town hall.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Axios he is leaning against attending the speech because “when Trump does it, it’s not a serious event.”
“We want to make [clear] that things are not business as usual. Things are falling apart,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), a DPCC co-chair who is undecided on attending.
Nearly a dozen House and Senate Democrats told Axios they are either leaning against attending the speech or undecided.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) all declined to commit to attending.
So did Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.).
At least that’s a smarter plan than trying to bring America’s least favorite victims in it for media coverage.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have bashed President Trump over mass federal firings since the first dismissals began in January. On Tuesday, they’re hoping to hold a human mirror to what that policy has done.
When Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he’ll be staring into a packed House chamber featuring not only Republican allies and Democratic adversaries, but also a host of former federal employees who were recently laid off by Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The fired workers will be there at the invitation of Democrats in both chambers — a strategy that represents just the latest piece of a broader campaign to highlight the real-world effects that Trump’s early policy moves are having on Americans who live far outside the Beltway.
Oh the horror, the humanity, the hollowness. How many Americans lost their jobs when Democrats shut down entire states during the pandemic? Three-quarter of a million Americans lost their jobs last year in the Biden economy. Only D.C. Dems could imagine fired federal workers becoming a crusade.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism
Democratic lawmakers are discussing a litany of options to protest at President Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday, including through outright disruption, a half dozen House Democrats told Axios.
Why it matters: Some of these tactics go beyond their leaders’ recommendation that members bring guests hurt by Trump and DOGE. This sets up a potential clash between party traditionalists and its more combative anti-Trump wing.
“The part that we all agree on is that this is not business as usual and we would like to find a way — productively — to express our outrage,” one House Democrat told Axios. There is widespread disagreement among Democrats, both inside and outside of Congress, over what would be the most appropriate and effective form of demonstration. What we’re hearing: Some members have told colleagues they may walk out of the chamber when Trump says specific lines they find objectionable, lawmakers told Axios.
Criticism of transgender kids was brought up as a line in the sand that could trigger members to storm out, according to a House Democrat. A wide array of props — including noisemakers — has also been floated:
Signs with anti-Trump or anti-DOGE messages — just as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) held up a sign during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last year that said “war criminal.” Eggs or empty egg cartons to highlight how inflation is driving up the price of eggs. Pocket constitutions to make the case that Trump has been violating the Constitution by shutting down congressionally authorized agencies. Hand clappers, red cards and various other props have also been discussed, multiple sources said. The intrigue: In closed-door meetings and on the House floor Monday night, lawmakers were specifically discouraged from using props, two House Democrats told Axios.
These tactics are also a source of considerable internal debate among House Democratic rank-and-file — in large part based on what they’ve heard back in their districts. “There are definitely a lot of constituents that really want Democrats to disrupt and there are … constituents who feel like that just plays into his hands,” one House Democrat told Axios. Zoom out: Disruptions during joint session speeches used to provoke outrage, but have become increasingly common in recent years.
Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) outburst at former President Obama — ”you lie,” he shouted — was a shocking event in 2009. Former President Biden was persistently heckled by Republicans during multiple State of the Union addresses. Then there was the aforementioned disruption of Netanyahu’s speech by Tlaib. Zoom in: Some groups of Democrats plan to mount more traditional protests through the use of color coordination in their wardrobe choices.
Pink: The Democratic Women’s Caucus wants all their members to wear pink in a unified display of defiance to a president many of them despise. Black: Female members of the Congressional Black Caucus have separately discussed donning black to more accurately capture the party’s somber mood. Blue and yellow: Ukraine Caucus co-chair Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) will distribute ties and scarves with the colors of Ukraine’s flag to signal support for President Volodymyr Zelensky. Others plan to sit stone-faced and refuse to clap during the entire speech, another time-honored tactic for opposition party members to silently protest the president.
What they’re saying: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to House Democrats that he and other leaders plan to attend the speech to “make clear to the nation that there is a strong opposition party ready, willing and able to serve as a check and balance.”
Jeffries also said leadership understands if some members skip the speech — as several have said they plan to do — but urged a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.” House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told Axios leadership is telling members to “keep the focus on the health and safety and the economic wellbeing of our constituents.” The bottom line: “Whether we are wearing pink, or black, or yellow and blue, we are all conveying our displeasure with this administration,” said. Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.).
“What’s more important is our work together and the pressure for three Republicans to do the right thing for everyone,” she said.
