In San José, multiple community groups hosted numerous workshops, town halls and protests to voice their concerns and outrage for President Donald J. Trump’s policies and plans for his second term.
On inauguration day, multiple community groups protested at the corner of Westfield Valley Fair mall on Stevens Creek Boulevard to show their support against Trump and his policy plans.
Ethan Maruyama, a third-year pre-nursing student from San José State, said he decided to join the protest because Trump was sworn back into office.
“(Trump) has an agenda that is very anti-immigrant, and he's frankly a fascist, and we are here to kind of fight back against his agenda and take our democracy back,” Maruyama said.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance were sworn into office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day inside the Capitol Rotunda, according to a Monday article from AP News.
Within the first 72 hours of the 47th president’s second term in office, Trump has signed over 67 executive orders, according to a webpage from the White House.
Climate Policies
Among the president’s numerous executive orders, Trump removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement a second time and declared a state of emergency to boost the country’s production of oil and gas, according to a Monday article from USA Today.
“I will also declare a National Energy emergency. We will ‘Drill baby drill,’ ” Trump said during his inauguration speech. “America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it.”
Trump said during his speech that signing this executive order will help decrease gas prices and refill the country’s treasury reserves.
Max Hsiu, a San José resident who voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024 and a counter protester on Monday, said he supports Trump’s action to increase oil production.
"I mean, look, I'm not here to talk about things that's going to save the world or reduce the effects and all that, but all I know is drilling is going to have an important factor in having reserves for our military," Hsiu said. "You know it will have an impact on global warming, but hey, that's just part of the price to protect our country."
Trump also said he plans to end the Green New Deal and has already signed an executive order to end a Environmental Protection Agency rule that he describes as an “electric vehicle mandate,” according to a Monday article from USA Today.
This rule requires auto manufacturers to cut greenhouse gas emissions by light to medium duty vehicles by 2027, according to the same article.
Immigration
Trump signed multiple executive orders to roll back multiple diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and to reverse policies that protect rights for immigrants, according to the White House’s webpage.
This includes declaring a national state of emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and ending birthright citizenship, according to a Wednesday article from NBC 5 Chicago.
Trump plans to send more U.S. troops to support immigration agents while restricting refugees from entering into the country to seek asylum, according to the same article.
The president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship will possibly take away citizenship status away from children born from parents who are undocumented or from children who have one parent with a temporary visa, according to a Tuesday article from TIME.
This includes parents with work or study abroad visas and tourism visas, according to the same article.
If the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship passes through the courts, the policy could come into effect starting on February 19.
The Department of Homeland Security also announced on Tuesday that it was ending a policy that restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting undocumented people from houses of worship, schools and hospitals, according to a Tuesday article from NBC News.
“(The U.S.) fails to protect our magnificent law-abiding American citizens, but provide sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world,” Trump said during his speech. “We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders, or, more importantly, its own people.”
Six days before Trump’s inauguration, the City of San José unanimously passed a memorandum that emphasizes that San José is a sanctuary city and will add more funding for the city’s Rapid Response Network, according to the city’s meeting minutes from Jan. 15.
The document supported by councilmembers Peter Ortiz, David Cohen, Domingo Candelas and Pamela Campos requests the city to reaffirm its commitment to preserving safety and dignity for all residents regardless of their national origin or legal status, according to the memorandum.
It also directs the city manager to allocate additional funds to provide legal assistance and other support services for those who risk legal consequences because of their immigration status, according to the same source.
This includes outlining additional funds for the Rapid Response Network, a community defense project, according to the document.
The Rapid Response Network protects immigrant families from deportation threats and provides additional resources during and after a community member has been arrested or detained, according to a webpage from Amigos de Guadalupe.
Councilmember Peter Ortiz, who represents District 5 in East San José, said he is hoping the city will be able to allocate between $5 to $10 million dollars to pay for additional staff members and to pay for more legal services.
Ortiz said he and other councilmembers decided to write the memorandum after news outlets announced that there have been ICE raids in the Central Valley.
In Bakersfield, border patrol agents conducted a four-day “targeted enforcement” operation on Jan. 7 to detain undocumented immigrants with criminal records, according to a Wednesday article from The LA Times.
Border patrol detained 78 individuals for crimes related to drug trafficking, burglary and child abuse, according to the same article.
“I reached out to my council colleagues and I said, ‘Look, we need to introduce a policy to communicate to our community where our city values stand, and that's with and in support of our undocumented community,’ ” Ortiz said. “We know that if the undocumented community goes back into the shadows, if they stop showing up to work, if they stop going to school, K-12 education, our local economy and education systems will be dismantled.”
Trans Rights
Four of Trump’s executive orders could possibly remove legal protections for transgender individuals, according to the same webpage from the White House.
Robin Jean McMahon, a sixth-year history student from SJSU, said in an interview before Trump's inauguration that it is very frustrating to see the president’s administration continue to target the trans community.
McMahon said a common narrative is that the community’s attempts to self-organize and to protect themselves are falsely recharacterized as attempts to fight Trump.
“The narrative around trans mobilization towards security, an attempt for trans people to be able to live safely is that we are fighting Trump right, that we win when Trump is gone,” McMahon said. “We don't win when Trump is gone. We just don't lose when Trump is gone.”
Trump signed these executive orders a week after the House of Representatives passed a bill banning transgender students from playing in women’s sports, according to a Jan. 14 CBS article.
The House of Representatives states that a person’s sex will only be recognized based solely on the individuals’ reproductive biology and genetics at birth, according to the bill.
“It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said during his speech.
McMahon said from her perspective, the goal is not to just fight him, but the community’s main priority for transgender individuals to be able to live safely in society.
She said Trump is an incidental, but dangerous roadblock to this goal because he and others outside the trans community cast out transgender individuals from society to form an enemy they can fight to continue perpetuating their own power.
“My goal is not to beat Trump. My goal is to have the people in my community and people in all kinds of communities to have flourishing, happy, productive, healthy lives,” McMahon said.
