I Met Senator Chris Van Hollen

A fight for everyone's rights.

Note from Brian: Today, we have a special guest author. Rochelle Davis is my partner in crime here at MurMur and also happens to be my mother. She is also a lifelong activist and community organizer. She spent the bulk of her career as the founder and director of the Healthy Schools Campaign. Rochelle is a powerhouse organizer, social entrepreneur, and change agent. Her work has impacted millions of kids in the Chicago area and around the country. She’s also been a pretty good Mom. Take it away, Mom.

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to hear Senator Chris Van Hollen speak to a small group of J Street supporters. The event had been scheduled for some time, but we happened to meet with the Senator just a week after his visit to El Salvador, where he met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man transferred to a prison there by the Trump Administration without due process.

Senator Van Hollen didn’t mince words: the fight for Garcia’s freedom is a fight for everyone’s rights. If a U.S. president can disappear someone into a gulag in El Salvador—without a trial or legal recourse—what’s to stop him from doing it to anyone in America? Alarmingly, Trump has openly said he’s considering exactly that.

And it’s not happening in a vacuum. This is part of a broader, fast-moving authoritarian push from the Trump Administration.

The Shock of Speed—and Silence

Intellectually, I knew this was coming. Project 2025 laid it out in chilling detail (here’s an excellent tracker on its implementation). But even with that knowledge, the pace and cruelty of the assault on our institutions has taken me by surprise.

I also held out hope that leaders of our most influential institutions—media, law, academia, business—would step up quickly and decisively. For the most part, they haven’t.

There have been exceptions. Some individuals have shown real courage:

• Seven senior Justice Department officials resigned after refusing to drop federal corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

• Jim Jones, a top FDA official, stepped down rather than oversee staffing cuts he believed endangered public health.

• Michelle King, Administrator of Social Security, resigned over unauthorized access to Americans’ sensitive records.

• Three lawyers from the powerful law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom quit in protest after the firm bowed to Trump’s legal demands.

• The Fellow Travelers Opera Team canceled their Kennedy Center performances in protest of the administration’s takeover of the institution.

These moments of bravery have started to break the dam. Recently, Harvard refused Trump’s demands that violated academic freedom, and then over 300 universities and colleges signed a public letter standing up to the administration.

In the courts, we’re seeing pushback too. At least 209 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump Administration 2.0. While many are still in progress, some major rulings have already gone against the administration. However, it remains uncertain whether the courts can enforce their rulings.

As of today, it is not yet clear whether our democratic guardrails are strong enough to hold.

So What Can We Do?

At the meeting with Senator Van Hollen, the conversation quickly turned to action: What can we do to stop this?

His answer was clear: start where you are. Each of us has a sphere of influence -our families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. We need to make sure they understand the threat we’re facing. And we need to encourage them to get involved in any way they can.

Don’t underestimate the power of real conversations. In a media landscape flooded with disinformation, you may be one of the only people someone trusts to explain what’s going on.

If you're reading this, you've already taken the first step—educating yourself. I recommend following Heather Cox Richardson’s substack for a historical perspective on current events and Dan Pfeiffer’s The Message Box for useful guidance on how to talk about politics, especially the April 16 post on Kilmar Abrego Garcia. If you’re looking for ways to plug in, Chop Wood, Carry Water offers concrete actions—big and small—that make a difference. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you want more resources or ways to plug in.

And if you need a reminder of the stakes, look to Senator Lisa Murkowski. Just this week, she said aloud what many leaders are feeling but too afraid to admit:

“We are all afraid…I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.”

She’s right. Retaliation is real. But so is courage. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said:

“There is power in unity, and there is power in numbers.”

Let’s be the many. Let’s fight back—for democracy, for dignity, for each other.