‘We need to fight.’ Hundreds of incensed Tri-Citians push back on Trump, DOGE and Musk
Roger Golladay is seriously upset.
At a Sunday town hall, the Marine Corps veteran and retired Columbia River dams worker spoke out about his frustrations with Rep. Dan Newhouse. He says the Central Washington Republican is letting the Trump Administration and Elon Musk trounce over his neighbors.
“What are you going to do, Dan, for our veterans as well as our federal workers,” asked Golladay, holding a sign that read, “Support Our Federal Work Force, Deport Billionaire Elon Musk(Rat).”
It was standing room only at the Mid-Columbia Libraries’ Kennewick branch as 300 came out for a pair of town hall meetings organized by the local chapter of a national group that’s pushing back against the Republican administration.
Golladay, 73, of Kennewick, says the Trump’s Administration deep austerity measures, led by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been sloppy and chaotic, having to rehire some workers at the Bonnevile Power Administration.
He’s also worried that cuts could impact his Social Security payments and his federal retirement, which he worked more than four decades in the public sector to earn. Golloday’s tried calling and messaging Newhouse’s congressional office to voice his frustrations, but to no avail.
Now, he says he’s ready to take action, to take to the streets in protest.
“We need to fight,” he said to raucous agreement from the crowd.
Newhouse was invited to the Indivisible Tri-Cities meeting this weekend, but neither he nor a staff member showed.
Newhouse told the Tri-City Herald last week he plans to schedule a public meeting soon to hear the concerns Central Washingtonians have but none have been announced.
His last town hall was in September.
So with the growing frustration, Golladay and other local residents spoke their concerns to a “Missing” poster of Newhouse taped to the wall behind an empty chair on Sunday.
They also organized a letter-writing campaign on issues including health care, education, tariffs, LGBTQ rights, public health research funding and climate change.
Indivisible Tri-Cities is a local chapter of the national Indivisible organization, founded in 2016 after Trump’s first election victory as a “social movement” to guide liberal-leaning resistance.
The group has rekindled around the country following his re-election. Its planning a nationwide “Hands Off!” protest against Trump and Musk for Saturday, April 5.
A chapter in Spokane was reportedly responsible for a notable and tumultuous town hall earlier this month at Whitworth University with GOP Rep. Mike Baumgartner.
Sunday’s session in Kennewick was the second weekend of Indivisible gatherings. The first was the weekend before at the Richland Public Library when the crowd was so large that not all were allowed inside the meeting room. This week, two hour-long sessions were organized.
Before the meeting, Allison Dabler, the moderator, called for a civil discussion since similar events with lawmakers in recent weeks had spiraled into chaos and shouting matches.
“Without a representative here to give answers we don’t agree with, or feel like insults or patronizes us... I want to just call on our better instincts. Your voices are the most important here today. Let’s let the loudest and most disruptive thing here today be Rep. Dan Newhouse’s absence,” she said.
Some said if Newhouse didn’t stand up to Trump, they would choose to not save him in a general election match-up with a more conservative candidate. “I just won’t vote,” one woman said.
‘Get up and do something about it.”
The Tri-Cities branch has been getting active for nearly a month.
Local organizer Loren Malone said they were expecting just 30 people at the first formal meeting in Richland. Instead, about 220 showed up.
“Right now, people are nervous about the things that are happening in their day-to-day lives, and they need somewhere to be able to say that out loud and have people hear them,” she said.
Malone says the group’s work is nonpartisan and its members span the political spectrum. Most of Sunday’s attendees were older and white.
As Trump continues to test the limits of presidential authority, and attempts to usurp the authority of federal judges he’s labeled as “activists,” these Tri-City residents increasingly feel the country is headed to a “constitutional crisis.”
Malone, who works as a pediatrician, says she was “pretty sad” about the turn of things at the beginning of the Trump administration.
“I dreaded reading the news, looking and seeing what was happening,” she said. “It was either sit and stew about it, or get up and do something about it.”
Wood, a retired engineer, was already hearing about the work the national Indivisible group was doing. So, at a meeting of the Tri-Cities Democrats, as Wood tells it, he and Malone linked up to bring these concerned minds together.
“We’ve had Republicans and Democrats turning out to these things,” he said. “I have neighbors that are pretty strong Trump supporters and we have a good dialogue. But it takes effort, and we really need to put the effort in because it’s so important. This is really our whole Democracy that’s at risk.”
Newhouse criticism
The new Congress has been working since Jan. 3, and lawmakers, including Newhouse, were back in their districts on break March 12-23. Last week, he toured a farm equipment shop in Pasco.
His office in Washington, D.C., has been flooded with calls and letters about Trump, Musk and DOGE. He’s acknowledged the “consternation” and “concern” his constituents feel, and he said those comments were “something I need to hear.”
Newhouse has received criticism from progressives in his majority-Republican district for passing a budget plan that paves the way for deep Medicaid cuts, and for leading the charge to censure Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, for disrupting Trump’s joint address to Congress earlier this month.
Doug White, a Democrat from Yakima, who challenged Newhouse for his seat in 2022, says his party has a “great opportunity” this year to challenge the congressman at the ballot box.
He attended Sunday’s event and said he’s inspired by the turnout and mobilization, which he says is unprecedented in the last 50 years.
“Dan Newhouse has always been a weather vane, and as a consequence right now it’s coming back and biting him in the butt because he can’t walk both sides of this line,” said White, who does political organizing and voter registration efforts through his PAC, Rural Americans United. “There’s no line to walk now.”
White says Central Washington’s interests in agriculture, trade, federal work and Hanford nuclear site cleanup are at odds with the Trump administration’s actions. The consequences of the current path are unavoidable and will impact people on a personal level, White argued.
This story was originally published March 24, 2025 at 12:51 PM.
