Hi, friends! It’s been a while!

I’ve been having a shitty time with the Trump 2.0 bad-news firehose. I bet you have, too. It feels worse, more intense, even more un-fightable than it did the first time around. I keep trying to remind myself that I can continue to build connections in my community and support my neighbors. I try to look at funny animal videos every evening. I’m watching The Great (inspirational, feminist, miserably ahistoric) and reading the Wolf Hall series (500 years too prescient re: the terrible consequences of inveterate ass-kissing). I take heart in getting to spend my days working for a kick-ass pro-abortion organization. I am endlessly proud to celebrate the ongoing success of The Flytrap and the rise of indie media collectives. I try to remember these things when the void comes a-calling.

And I suppose it could be worse: this could be an odd-number-year and the Texas Legislature could be in session simultaneously with the Trump/Musk administration.

Oh, wait.

Ghghghghghhhnnnnnnnnnnghghg.

I’ve been doing my Civic Duty™ and calling my elected officials to holler at them about any- and everything. I’m lucky to live in Austin, where my local electeds are mostly progressive. But every phone-hollering session inevitably ends with half-drunk voicemail entreaties to Ted Cruz and John Cornyn’s interns asking them to please let their bosses know I wish they did less Nazi stuff, imploring them to let up a little on the fascism bit. As a treat.

I know Cruz and Cornyn don’t care. I know they’re funneling my correspondence directly to File 13. But I register my opposition anyway, because it’s another thing I can do. Sometimes it’s the only thing I can do. The fascists will fash, but I can’t let them believe they’re doing it with my implied consent.

Amid this helplessness, a Bluesky post from the Indivisible folks Monday night got me thinking:

We've identified a point of leverage against Musk. Congressional GOP want Dem votes to pass a funding bill by March 14th. Dems have the opportunity to play hardball here, and some have already committed to. We're trying to build unified opposition. New explainer: indivisible.org/resource/exp…

— Ezra Levin (@ezralevin.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T01:27:56.757Z

Why should folks who have left-leaning electeds on the other end of the line have all the satisfaction? Why should I struggle to articulate myself on every ding-dang issue to inveterate assholes? Where is the pre-written script for me, an angry constituent who is already dealing with all manner of fuckery, and who has, I think, earned a short 20 seconds of satisfying holler?

I deeply appreciate the work of groups such as Indivisible and 5Calls, which make it incredibly easy to contact our (ostensible) representatives. But they mostly provide rote scripts that fail to capture my my outrage in an intern-answering-the-phones-palatable way. The job of providing bespoke scripts to various constituencies is a bigger-than-big one; it’s unfair, I think, to demand such. So when I have time, I like to craft something bespoke to convey my righteous indignation, but I rarely do have such time. And I have, compared to most, plenty of time—I’m not a caregiver on top of my paid work obligations, I don’t have kids (on purpose), and my side-hustles are mostly passion projects.

I think I have time to write or publish one script a week for fellow red-geography dwellers who wish to register their opposition to Donald Trump’s wholesale shitcanning of the government.

The idea I have in mind is not to create perfect messaging that will suddenly awaken fascist fuckos to the depth of their misdeeds. This is: impossible. I just want to offer people who feel the way I do scripts that feel more substantive than “I oppose XYZ” and “Please don’t do this thing you very certainly intend to do while laughing at me heartily for my lib-brained nonsense.” There’s real importance and impact in practicing the articulation of progressive values in fifteen seconds or less. In drilling down to the most essential thing, this time, for now. In fucking saying the thing. Just to say it. And to practice it for the next time you need to say it to someone who might be a better listener than your local Republican chucklefuck.

When I floated this idea on Bluesky, folks immediately chimed in with suggestions. So I’m taking @beedunk177633.bsky.social‬’s initial suggestion (née “Angry White Male,” lol) as template for what I’m leaving on the voicemails of Ted Cruz and John Cornyn this week, because I happen to be most the fuck pissed off about letting Musk and his cronies loose in the fed:

“I’m [my name], a constituent living in zip code [mine]. I oppose the handing-over of sensitive government data to Elon Musk and his deputies at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk is acting without Congressional authorization, and certainly without my vote — or your confirmation. Congress has the ability to reclaim its rightful ownership of government appropriations and operations, and must do so with utmost urgency. I ask you to take ownership of your job and your responsibility to your constituents, and to stop Elon Musk and DOGE from further eschewing the basic agreements of our democracy. I disagree with your political views in the strongest possible terms, but my ability to meaningfully register such opposition is fundamentally dissolved by privileging the extra-legislative actions taken by the Trump administration’s lackeys at the expense of the normal democratic process. There is an oligarchal, administrative coup in progress in Washington, D.C., and if you don’t oppose it, you are aiding and abetting it. Constituents like me are taking note.”

Please use and adapt for your own hostile reps! (Again, 5Calls is a great resource for getting contact info quickfast.) You may feel as though a deftly placed “eat shit and die, if convenient” could do good work, and who am I to stop you? Free speech, U-S-A, ‘Murka, and all that.

I know that there are anti-fascist and pro-democracy orgs, especially those based in GOP-dominated areas, already publishing scripts and calls to action on various issues; I am excited about sharing their resources with my readership, too. I’ll aim to post a new Red State Script every Tuesday-ish, depending on the news cycle. If you have a script suggestion, and especially if you work for a state, local, or grassroots org producing such content for constituents, holler at me and I’ll share it, happily, with edits and adaptations made for diverse geographies — I’m grimesandrea@proton.me by email. (And if you have a script in mind and want to share it with the world, tag me on Bluesky or post it in the comments!)

Let’s holler into the void alone, together.

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