Hundreds flocked to the State Capitol building to protest Project 2025 and the Trump Administration’s sweeping executive orders on Feb. 5.
The protest is part of a nationwide effort — “Reject Project 2025” — with 50 protests across all 50 states the same day against the tenets of the conservative Project 2025 agenda. Protesters gathered at the Forward Statue in front of the State Capitol building to express their discontent over the current presidential administration’s recent wave of executive orders on a wide range of issues including immigration, citizenship, health and science funding and more.
The group later marched around the capitol chanting, “This is what democracy looks like,” before moving down State Street.
Wisconsinites found common ground in the protest, but different issues drew them out. Mary Beth, a former Republican and veteran, took specific aim at the limitations the Trump Administration has put on scientific research.
“I think science should not be limited by government policies,” Mary Beth said. “Not allowing the CDC to have pages about trans rights, studies that have anything to do with trans people, because you don’t want something to exist, it leads to uneducated decision making and policies.”
More photos from the protest:
Government health agencies have been effectively forced to remove an immeasurable amount of research papers in its archives to review for language compliance with Trump’s executive order on acceptable terminology. The order looks to retract and revise research that includes the words “gender,” “transgender,” “pregnant person” and “ pregnant people.”
Char, who only wished to be identified by first name, is sick of feeling panic. She instead wanted to turn it into organizing against her rights being stripped away. Char is an immigrant that moved to the United States at 3 years old.
“I’ve decided I can’t sit around anymore,” she said. “There’s so many pieces of legislation that are ass-backwards. I can’t even recall all of them. Every day I wake up, I’m like ‘Oh it can’t get worse,’ and then it gets worse.”
She also takes issue with the rollback of environmental protections, tax breaks for the wealthy and efforts to dismantle DEI programs.
One of Trump’s first executive orders since taking office in his second term was to terminate DEI initiatives in federal contracting, workforce and spending in place of so-called “meritocracy.” Char and Mary Beth shared the same sentiment on DEI rollbacks. Char, as an immigrant, and Mary Beth, as a veteran, are both equal beneficiaries of DEI efforts.
Mike, another attendee, wanted to see a return to the rule of law. He feels as if the Trump Administration has overstepped legal boundaries in many cases by playing on technicalities within the justice system’s appeals process or “a game for Trump,” as he called it.
“It’s the law that has failed us in the sense that they couldn’t act fast enough,” he said. “They want to be right so they take their sweet time.“
A singular counter protester showed up wearing a hoodie with Trump on it that read “Daddy’s home.” He argued, mostly in a calm manner, about his preference for Trump over the alternative of former President Biden or Kamala Harris. While he noted that he doesn’t particularly agree with all of Trump’s decisions, he prefers him as a “strong leader.”
Sasha Rivers came to represent the Indigenous LGBTQ or Two Spirit community. Rivers is part of the Ojibwe Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and came to Madison from Woodruff for the protest. While she admittedly wasn’t too versed on the breadth of executive orders and policy, she finds herself scared for Indigenous communities getting rounded up in ICE arrests.
“The whole immigration, ICE and everything, that’s kind of what really hit home in a big way,” Rivers said. “The majority of us are brown… so we get mistaken for south of the border Indigenous people — Hispanic, Mexican, Latinos, Latinas.”
