A deeper look into the politics of two sides
LUCAS COUNTY – President’s Day provoked strikingly different reactions from the local polarized political climate: One group publicly protested while the other held a private party.
Outside of 1 Government Center, the seat of government in Toledo, more than a hundred people on Monday braved the numbing winter winds to make their displeasure with President Donald Trump known. The National Day of Protest was in association with the 50501 Movement (50 protests. 50 states. One movement) against the Trump administration.
Susan Kuehn, an organizer with Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition, explained her group’s presence in front of the government building. “We are protesting against the Trump-Musk administration dismantling and taking over the federal government and federal agencies, and purging hundreds of thousands of employees without cause for their [Trump-Musk] own benefit.
“They’re attempting an unconstitutional act,” she added.
While there were many specific reasons for the protest, Elon Musk, who is unelected and unconfirmed by Congress but deep into the government’s business, seemed to be the main target of the protesters’ frustration.
Trump unveiled his plan for the new Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) while on the campaign trail. During that time, the venture included Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, but when he stepped down from the role, that put Musk in the center seat of DOGE, formerly the United States Digital Service (USDS), and he began slashing government spending and regulations without approval from Congress.
Trump took office a month ago, and since then DOGE has gotten to work in a strikingly similar manner to how Musk gutted Twitter after he bought it for $44 billion.
It’s unclear how many government employees have been fired by DOGE, but the most recent effort included a call from the Office of Personnel Management to layoff all probationary employees, with no known cause for the layoffs, which could be counted into the hundreds of thousands.
The probationary period refers more broadly to employees who are still in their first two years of service within the government, or who may have taken a new position within the government, including promotions.
United States Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) responded from the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations and said, “There is nothing efficient about indiscriminate mass firings.”
The senator vouched for the estimated 220,000-250,000 probationary employees, saying that 56,000 of those employees were part of the Veterans Health Administration, and warned that “these firings are totally arbitrary – pushing out high performers and the promising next generation of our federal workforce who won’t be easily replaced.”
At the beginning of last week, Musk and Trump addressed concerns specifically about DOGE from the Oval Office, where Trump defended his choice to place Musk at the head of DOGE.
Trump said DOGE had already uncovered “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse,” with a grand total of $55 billion claimed to have been saved on the DOGE website.
Musk was busy, but so was Trump, having signed 65 executive orders since the beginning of his second term.
When expounding on the savings he claimed to have done for taxpayers, Trump pushed back against federal judges who have impeded his and Musk’s ability to go as far as they have wanted with the massive changes in the federal government.
These massive changes to the government have not been met with support by all.
When asked what made him want to come out to the Toledo protest, Ryan McConnell, of central Toledo, said, “You know, if nothing else, just that people realize what’s going on, that President Musk and MAGA don’t speak for all Americans, that people see the wickedness that’s going on, how the government’s backsliding into authoritarianism.”
The Republican Party’s party
The energy, intensity and discomfort of the protesters sharply contrasted with the Republican Party that gathered 11 miles away, in the suburb of Holland, Ohio. Held inside the Lucas County Republican Party Headquarters, GOP members celebrated President’s Day with food and games.
Red was the primary color of the event, and elephants were on display throughout the private party. “We had a dress as your favorite president contest, and we had a young man dressed as Teddy Roosevelt,” said Barbara Orange, chair of the Lucas County Republican Party, as she recapped the afternoon’s events.
When asked about Trump’s actions that have rattled the federal government, Orange said, “I think President Trump is fulfilling all the promises he made on his campaign trail.”
If there’s any waste or fraud that needs to be addressed it should be pointed out. And then, of course, Congress is the ultimate one to make a decision on any changes that would come from that,” she said.
Orange said that pausing funds may be necessary in the meantime to figure out where payments are going, and added she thought government should be approached like a business that needs to be audited.
These were the same conclusions Musk expounded upon during the Oval Office press briefing, where he pointed to the $2 trillion national deficit ($1.83 trillion, to be exact) as the reason behind his aggressive cuts.
Musk warned the cuts were “…essential for America to remain solvent as a country.”
Anecdotally, Musk pointed to payments made by the Department of Treasury without specific categorizations, calling them “blank checks,” and complained about the current processes associated with putting things on a “do not pay list” associated with the Office of Payment Integrity through the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019.
“The people voted for major government reform,” Musk said when asked to respond to the criticism that DOGE was part of a hostile government takeover that was happening without transparency. He cited the Republican majorities in Congress and the popular vote Trump won as a sign and mandate for the changes happening now.
The Toledo Free Press was denied permission to photograph or interview participants taking part in the festivities, which lasted from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the same relative timeline the protesters were out in front of 1 Government Center.
While the Republicans had a colloquial get-together, where people had a pre-existing familiarity with one another, the coalition in front of the government building was a mixed bag of mostly strangers.
Some represented themselves, while others were members of groups, like the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition, Veterans for Peace and Toledo Persists, all concerned citizens who turned out in conjunction with protests across the nation.
This is a great way to activate, organize, get together and see how many people are like-minded, [who] feel just as angry and can yell, in a healthy way, while also sharing other ways to volunteer, to donate, [to share] what organizations are actually doing the work.
Colby Buzzell, of Perrysburg, Ohio
“The voters are getting exactly what they voted for,” Musk said, brushing off concerns about any conflicts of interest he may have from receiving $18 billion in contracts from the Pentagon.
“All of our actions are fully public,” he said referring to the DOGE website, which has three main categories in the navigation bar that relate to the federal government: Savings, Workforce and Regulations.
“Savings” appears to be the most integral navigation section on the website, offering a large sweeping view of contracts for each respective agency. A number of the contracts are listed as offering no savings at all, meaning nothing was cut, while others offer millions of dollars in savings.
“Competence and caring will cut the budget deficit in half,” Musk said, and estimated that by 2026 there will be no more inflation in the U.S. at all.
At the same time, he said DOGE was “…moving fast so we will make mistakes, but we’ll correct the mistakes very quickly.”
But the answer for transparency seems to be vague at the very least, as Musk’s DOGE employees have largely remained anonymous, except for Marko Elez, 25, who resigned after being doxed and having incredibly racist tweets come to light.
Behaviors like these, including Musk’s alleged Sieg Heil at Trump’s inauguration, have sewn distrust among skeptics of Musk, and have caused backlash in Europe, causing Tesla sales to plummet there.
And while the DOGE website includes a list of contracts with different government agencies, the organization of the contracts seems to be organized thematically. The termination of news outlet subscriptions is organized towards the top of the page, regardless of date, but the information is not organized or organizable by date, amount of money saved, or by government department.
When looking into the specific contracts, the reasons for cutting funds are not evident, just that they are happening.
Boiler plate terms like, “TERMINATE FOR CONVENIENCE” or “FUNDING ONLY ACTION” are listed as the reason for modification of the contracts.
An almost $16 million contract with USAID given to DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL, INC for training conflict and violence negotiators was cut by nearly $14 million without a full sentence to explain why.
Musk admitted in the Oval Office presser that a previous claim to send $50 million of condoms to Gaza was incorrect, and said, “Some of the things I said will be incorrect and should be corrected.”
But the lack of transparency in the process of cutting the government – and Musk’s cavalier attitude towards making mistakes – have not exactly reassured Americans who are suspicious of him.
“10s of 1,000s of federal employees that have been fired; the only one the administration has spoken out for was one from DOGE, who resigned for racist tweets. So you see who the government’s looking out for,” Ryan McConnell said during the Toledo protest.
“It’s just a bad situation. Abolishing agencies that help people, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, USAID, targeting all these agencies that were investigating Musk. They [the Trump administration] have an unelected billionaire, basically the richest man on the planet, basically running the government however he sees fit,” he complained.
Elections and results
Ultimately, the voters did choose Trump, who won the 2024 election with 49.87 percent of the vote.
A recent Gallup Poll showed that within Trump’s first week in office, there was a 91 percent approval rate amongst Republicans, 6 percent approval among Democrats and 46 percent among Independents. That first week included big changes in the government, including pulling out of the Paris Accords, pulling out of the World Health Organization and attempting to get rid of birthright citizenship.
More recently, a CBS poll showed 50 percent or higher support for Trump on most issues, except for America taking over Gaza, with only 13 percent approval, and only 23 percent of people saying Musk should have an integral role in government operations. A more popular conclusion was that Musk should have some role in the government, with over 50 percent of people saying he should have some, to a lot of, a role in what’s going on.
But Lucas County is not indicative of the rest of the United States, or even Ohio. Kamala Harris won the popular vote in Lucas County with 55.23 percent of the vote – 106,320 votes to Trump’s 82,398 – at 42 percent.
When asked about Trump’s alleged overreach of power, Orange replied, “I’m not a constitutional authority,” and wished not to comment on DOGE, the layoffs or on any ways the judicial branch had blocked Trump’s actions.
Well, I would like to see where the waste and fraud is within our government, no matter where it is, no matter who it is, whether it’s Republican or Democrat or Independent.
Barbara Orange, chair of the Lucas County Republican Party
And while declining to comment on specifics, Orange said, “I do have a general trust in what his [Trump’s] ultimate goals are, to put America first and correct a lot of things that have gone wrong for probably many years.”
Some Americans trust Trump, mostly those who voted for him, to sort out the details of a chaotic month-long series of cutting actions, while others find it impossible to do so.
“When they talk about these fraudulent spending things with USAID, it’s not fraud so much as some policies they disagree with,” McConnell said.
“You can have the conversation of saying where the money should be going, but just axing an agency that helps 10s of 1,000s, if not hundreds of 1,000s, people worldwide is not the solution. And they’re calling it one thing when it really is another.”
McConnell went on to say the gutting of the government with the cover of rooting out fraud seemed to be a facade to make space for Trump’s new proposed tax cuts for the rich.
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during Trump’s first term is set to expire at the end of December 2025, and, if made permanent, the changes to taxes could severely increase the deficit.
