More than 2,000 area residents filled downtown San Antonio streets and rallied at Main Plaza on April 19, 2025. It was a repeat of a similar gathering of two weeks prior that resulted in almost as significant numbers. Similar marches—hundreds of them, most convened by the recently emerged #50501 movement—were held across the United States the same day. They included gatherings in more than a dozen towns and cities in Texas.
“I just got back from hosting a town hall, something that Republican members of Congress have been told not to do,” said U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who revved up the crowd before the march.
“They said they never wanna hold town halls. The reason they don’t wanna hold town halls is because they are acting as Trump and Musk employees instead of representatives of The United States Of America. So let’s talk a little bit here at our own town hall about the stuff that these guys don’t wanna be talking about.
“They don’t wanna talk about the fact that Elon Musk, while he’s firing veterans, more than anybody ever has in American history is making 8 million dollars a day in federal government contracts. They don’t wanna talk about their plan to eliminate a trillion dollars from Medicaid leaving our kids and our seniors without health care. They don’t wanna talk about that.
“They don’t wanna talk about the fact that they wanna cut social security in order to give tax cuts to billionaires. They don’t wanna talk about that. But we are gonna talk about it. We are going to expose them. We are going to march and chant and fight back until we stop every single one of these attacks.”
Casar, like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez barnstorming across the nation on their heavily attended ‘Fighting Oligarchy‘ tour, highlighted how mass organizing and demonstrations such as this day’s are beginning to force cracks in Republican support for President Trump’s budget priorities—including cutting healthcare for Americans to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. It’s an exchange that is wildly unpopular with Republicans and Democrats alike.
“Just a few days ago, a dozen Republican members of Congress signed a letter saying they’re a little bit nervous about cutting our health care for billionaires. Well, we need them a little bit more than nervous. We need them to put their votes where their mouths are.”
Deceleration captured the voices of many who marched and heard a range of reasons to reject efforts being made by Trump and Musk to, essentially, crush democracy as we have known it and replace it with … something else. Plutocracy fits, if your focus is the self-dealing of the Trump family and the inner circle financially benefiting from Trump’s shaking of global economies. Those studying the philosophical movers inspiring a large MAGA slipstream and Musk’s weaponization of federal data will see the dangerous emergence of techno authoritarianism. U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s rise was largely funded by Peter Thiel and he and Musk both have connections to a “Dark Enlightenment” philosopher who has openly called for ending U.S. democracy in favor a corporate state led by a “CEO” and governing board while joking about turning the poor in biodiesel.
Trump’s laser focus on reducing or eliminating the authority of any and all that may constrain his own power (defunding the bureaucracy, jettisoning military leadership, demanding obedience from higher ed, rejecting the power of courts, even the Supreme one) demonstrated for many who we interviewed that we are rushing into something we haven’t seen before. At least in this country. Signs and cries at the march suggested that 1930s Germany may betray Trump’s template for governance. You’ll find some of those voices in the above video.
The April actions that have seen hundreds of thousands across the United States hit the streets to decry what marchers describe as Trump and Musk’s authoritarian trajectory are interesting in most of those marching are new to protest. Deceleration regularly meets with people marching for the first time in their lives, including current and former Republicans.
One marcher in full camouflage hoisting an American flag introduced himself as a 32-year veteran of the U.S. Army.
“Myself and all other veterans, we took a an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic,” he told Deceleration. “There’s nothing in there that says to protect Donald Trump. The biggest domestic threat to our Constitution is Donald Trump and those that support him.”
Deceleration spoke with one of the event organizers, SATX 50501 Representative Alex Svehla, on April 5, 2025, and include that below. It has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
Deceleration: What motivated you to step in to do the work that you’re doing?
Alex Svehla: So I’m Alex with 50501. We’re an organization that is trying to pull out the current federal executive overreach of our government, both with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
What was the first thing you did? Like, how did you step in? Do you remember that day?
I’ve been involved in political activism for a long time. So I knew when this Trump administration came in and they just started rolling, you know, we knew that Project 2025 was a thing, and we had all these warning signs. So it just, boom, like, you know, you just hit the ground running.
We had to act fast in regard to protests, to organizing, to messaging. It was just something that we knew that we had to do. It was not like we questioned it. It’s not like we had any doubts of what we were going to do because there’s so many people’s lives on the line. Everyone’s being affected by it differently, but it’s a very serious matter.
Some of the messaging I heard was, you know, prepare to vote in four years. Do you feel like that’s going to be effective?
I feel like there’s short-term goals and long-term goals. The short-term goal is awareness. There’s local elections going on right now. There’s a push for these changes going on right now. There’s a lot of pressure on Musk in particular to resign or remove DOGE entirely that I think he’s feeling. You’ve seen, for instance, Tesla stock absolutely plummeting.
So I think there’s some real action in the short term. And in the long term, yeah, we’re gonna have to vote in two years for Congress and House and things like that. And then, even more long term in four years, another president. So it’s a very long and short term game.
The next National Day of Action is May 1, 2025. In San Antonio that will coincide with the May Day Caravan hosted by Oppressed Revolutionaries for Worker Power.
Images from the Rally and March
