JACKSON, Miss.—Anna Corcoran had grown exhausted with just complaining about national politics. She wanted to share her frustrations in a way that felt meaningful.
Although the 18-year-old Brandon, Miss., native grew up in a staunch Republican household, she found herself at odds with President Donald Trump’s policies targeting immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and women’s reproductive rights.
So on Feb. 5, she took to the streets for a protest outside the Mississippi Capitol Building in Jackson, Miss. She joined about two dozen other demonstrators who wanted to express their outrage over Trump’s policies.
As other protesters shouted in unison that “no one is illegal on stolen land” and to “never forget January 6,” Corcoran told the Mississippi Free Press that it was her first time exercising her First Amendment Right to protest.
“I’m here to fight not only for myself and my sister but all of those who can’t fight. I grew up thinking that voting red was the Christian vote but I don’t want to let that man in office represent what a Christian is,” she said, standing with fellow protester, 18-year-old Leslie Reeves.
While the Trump administration appears “focused on immigrants and abortion,” they should be drafting policies to tackle “mass shootings and climate change,” Corcoran added.
The protesters also expressed their frustration with the involvement of tech billionaires like Elon Musk in the federal government’s affairs. “It’s been three weeks and we’ve gotten rid of essential departments in unconstitutional, unlawful moves that should not be allowed to happen,” a protester named Samantha who only wanted to share her first name, told the Mississippi Free Press. “We’ve got things challenging in court, but where are our representatives?”
Musk leads The White House’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, commonly known as DOGE. With a purported mission to slash government spending, DOGE has led the mass layoffs of workers across the federal government, including an attempt to eliminate the federal humanitarian agency, USAID. Musk has drawn heavy criticism, with people accusing him of having a conflict of interest and of using DOGE to attempt to access private data about citizens.
A federal judge on Tuesday, Feb. 18, declined to immediately block Musk and DOGE from accessing government data systems or laying off federal workers but expressed concerns about the scope of his role—a role Congress did not approve in which he leads an entity that Congress did not create.
“Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight,” U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her ruling. “In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this court acts within the bounds of its authority.”
Attacks on Diversity, Trans Americans
Several of the demonstrators gathered outside the Mississippi Capitol Building on Feb. 5 told the Mississippi Free Press that they were not representing any particular organized group. But the protest in Jackson was one of many anti-Trump rallies that took place around the country on the same day.
Donald Trump has signed a litany of executive orders since his second term began on Jan. 20. He has focused on repealing Biden-era policies, such as those designed to foster diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal government.
Since Trump took office, a flurry of companies—including Google, Amazon and Target—have announced plans to modify or eliminate initiatives furthering DEI in the workplace. Other companies, like Costco and the Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, have openly declared that they will keep their DEI policies in place.
Though Trump claimed during his campaign to have had no knowledge of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, many of his executive orders have lined up with directives outlined in the document—including orders to advance “school-choice” initiatives, impose sanctions on countries that refuse to accept deportees and change U.S. foreign aid policy.
In an effort to prohibit federal recognition of transgender people’s gender identity, Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20, proclaiming that the United States government will recognize only two biological sexes: male and female. Weeks later, on Feb. 5, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Mississippi lawmakers previously banned transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports in 2021.
Trump’s Feb. 5 order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” allows the U.S. Department of Education to ensure that schools receiving federal funding under Title IX are penalized for not aligning with Trump’s priorities.
“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared at a signing ceremony, the Associated Press reported on Feb. 5.
‘What We’re Becoming’
That same day, as protesters rallied outside the Mississippi Capitol Building, Rev. Jim Becker told the Mississippi Free Press that he joined the demonstration in solidarity with those who are too afraid to protest for themselves.
Becker leads the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jackson and said that many of the families in his congregation are fearful of how rhetoric and policies targeting transgender people will impact them.
“We have transgender folks in our congregation (and) non-binary (folks). … We have some parents with trans children and some of them are living in fear,” Becker told the Mississippi Free Press. “I said as the minister I will not be afraid to talk; I will not be afraid to be arrested.”
“What he’s done in just three weeks … it’s amazing what we were and what we’re becoming. It’s absolutely tragic,” he continued, adding that he hoped the demonstration would inspire more people to organize and not let Trump’s policies go unchallenged.
“We need to double, triple, quadruple this. Week after week we’re going to see more and more stuff going on and it’s going to hit closer and closer to home for a lot of people,” he said.
