with CHARLIE HARPER

Almost since the day after last November’s election returned Donald Trump to the White House and delivered Republican majorities in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives, liberal foes of the president and virtually every registered Democrat in the nation began counting the days until the “real will of the American people” began to erode Trump’s stranglehold on the federal government.

Trump’s many detractors focused on two principal upcoming events. The first was the November 2026 Congressional elections; many Democrats well recalled that during his first term, Trump and the Republicans got scalded in 2018, losing 40 House seats and making possible two impeachments of the president.

The second hoped-for event was the anticipated collective impact of town hall and other public meetings traditionally held by incumbent congressmen and women during the frequent holiday breaks from normal duty in Washington DC. Democrats eagerly awaited the Easter 2025 recess for its potential revelation of massive opposition to Trump’s policies, from DOGE-inspired federal government reductions in force spearheaded by Elon Musk to the cruelty of policies designed as deterrents to immigration to the hurtful impact on lower-income families of Trump’s aggressive tariff schemes.

The Easter 2025 recess came and went, however, without much open rancour from the congressional constituencies, and liberals were discouraged. Surely, they believed, the longer summer recess in July and August would produce more and louder complaints about the current administration.

There are now some reports that substantiate that hope and belief.

Now American Labor Day has come and gone. Kids are back in school and most workers are back on the job. The Associated Press, CNN’s website, NBC News and other mainstream news outlets are starting to relay reports of pretty lively criticism of Trump and his policies. Here are some examples:

Anger at Trump was a major focus of questions at Wisconsin Republican representative Bryan Steil’s town hall in late July, as attendees excoriated the congressman’s efforts to blame former President Joe Biden’s policies for the country’s immigration problems.

“What I see happening to our immigrant population embarrasses me, and you have not raised a voice to complain about it,” one attendee told Steil. “Where do I see your leadership? I see no leadership. I see following Trump 100 percent of the time.”

The loudest crowd reactions at the town hall were in response to Steil’s introductory remarks celebrating the increased effectiveness of America’s southern border security, leading one attendee to shout, “We are all immigrants.”

In Virginia in late July, at Democratic congresswoman Jennifer McClellan’s town hall for an audience of mostly senior citizens, anger at the Trump administration’s handling of immigration shifted the meeting’s focus away from Social Security and Medicaid toward criticism of the administration.

While McClellan asked attendees to keep their questions geared toward senior issues, the audience persisted with more questions about immigration than any other subject. They reportedly expressed concerns about deportations and immigration raids. McClellan’s best reported applause lines critiqued the Trump administration’s handling of deportations.

“I hope that when we enforce our immigration policy — whether it’s who we detain or who we deport — that we do so consistent with American values of due process and compassion,” McClellan said.

Trump’s signature legislation for this congressional term will certainly be his omnibus spending and saving bill that he lobbied for so effectively a couple of months ago. A major feature of the bill was its nearly $1 trillion cuts to Medicaid and overall reductions in federal health care assistance. Democrats correctly see this issue as a winner for them next year, and have been hammering away at the GOP for months.

Federal health care cuts did dominate the discussion at several GOP town halls, and the Dems feel that over the next year, as these and other cuts take effect, anger at Trump will only intensify.

Representative Mike Flood, a Republican from Nebraska, told NBC that his office had been flooded with calls about the cuts in Trump’s bill that he and almost all Republicans had voted for, so he decided to emphasize the issue at a town hall earlier last month. “Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid — that was the No 1 issue,” he reported.

Trump’s legislation imposes new work requirements for able-bodied adults aged 19 to 64 who receive Medicaid benefits.

“They’ve got the bejesus scared out of them,” Flood told reporters, referring to what he described as an audience of mostly seniors. “They think that they’re going to lose their health care, you know? And that’s not the case.” But Democratic messaging continues to insist that many will indeed lose most or all of their federally-subsidized health care benefits.

Flood told reporters that he admitted to his audience at the University of Nebraska that the Trump bill wasn’t perfect but argued that it cut taxes, would “provide certainty” for Americans and “protects Medicaid” by shoring up the program. Responding to other questions, Flood said one way to bring down the cost of health insurance was to “not have as many people on Medicaid.” He also told the crowd the country can’t afford such sweeping benefits.

Some replied by chanting “Yes, you can!” while others reportedly booed and jeered Flood.

In Chico, a mid-sized city in California’s Central Valley, Republican congressman Doug LaMalfa also heard sharp criticism about the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big bill. LaMalfa responded by parroting GOP leaders who have insisted the tax and spending reductions don’t cut Medicaid but rather reform it. “There’s not cuts for Medicaid,” LaMalfa said, misleadingly.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, an arm of Congress that is highly regarded and widely respected for its objectivity, has reported that new work requirements and other changes are projected to cut nearly $1 trillion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade.

One of LaMalfa’s constituents asked him how he could justify voting for Trump’s bill when “43 percent of your constituents — the highest of any California congressional district — receive Medicaid and other federal assistance?”

LaMalfa, who represents a safe GOP district and attended five town hall meetings in his district during the summer recess, waffled in response. He replied that changes to the Trump law could always be made in the future to restore a better balance in the bill’s impact. But he had to admit that enacting those changes would be an uphill fight.

“OK, so this bill is not going to be the be all, end all. It’s not the end of the discussion. It’s not the end of the legislation,” LaMalfa said.

“That’s bulls---!” one attendee yelled in response.

The apparent widespread discontent was not unexpected. Trump himself has often said that there would be temporary pain for Americans as the effects of his tariffs and budget cuts took hold in the economy. All of this begged the question of what the opposition was doing about it.

Democratic lawmakers were quizzed about the direction of their party at several town halls. Attendees asked how Democrats will combat Trump’s agenda and turn the party’s trajectory around following the 2024 presidential election loss.

“There’s no one running to save us,” Democratic congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado said at a town hall. “There is no panacea. There’s no master plan. It is about doing the work, developing and building coalitions.” Several Democrats told audiences that Democrats must run on more than just opposition to Trump.

Current senator and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Michael Bennet said. “Trump’s not doing anything, basically, that he didn’t promise to do when he was running for office, when he built a majority coalition to get elected president and we couldn’t stop it. Knowing what we know about it sitting in this room… we have to ask ourselves, ‘Why are we not able to build a governing coalition to beat them?’” Bennet asked.

There are many answers to Bennet’s question. Two particularly good ones are the Democrats’ failure to own Joe Biden’s alarming decline into senescence and an unwillingness to foster an open competition for their presidential nomination last year. Both factors indicate a reluctance to adapt and change course.

Neither fact reflected well on a party that should have kept the White House in Democratic hands, though inflation and immigration were likely to tilt congressional control to the Republicans.

The Dems may have to turn to an outsider to save them in three years.