The Bay Area Reacts to 4 More Years of Trump

As Donald Trump is sworn in as president again, we hear from Bay Area residents about their hopes and fears for the next 4 years.

Special thanks to Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, Juan Carlos Lara, Alastair Boone, Tessa Paoli, and KQED’s Forum team.

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Lily Scheer [00:00:58] I’m Lily.

Alastair Boone [00:00:59] What’s your last name?

Lily Scheer [00:01:01] Scheer. We’re at Lake Merritt in Oakland. How am I feeling? I’m mostly concerned about the imminent Ice raids. I think a lot of things will be the same as they were, but just less covert than they were under Biden. But I think the egregiousness and cruelty of everything is just going to be more in everyone’s face under Trump.

Antoine Mendoza [00:01:27] I mean, I know my opinion is that he’s a convicted felon and I’m about to be in office. But I guess it’s first for everything. My name is Antoine Mendoza, we’re in downtown Oakland, near Lake Merritt. Well, I hope you don’t pack my life, but I guess from what I heard, you supposed to cut down a lot of the programs that help the homeless. So I hope that doesn’t happen. But if it does, I guess I gotta adjust to it.

Nate Day [00:01:51] Hi, my name is Nate Day. California’s been blue, and so it’s like it doesn’t really affect me being a citizen in California. And it’s a mindset thing, too. I can’t really allow his decisionmaking, whatever – I still got to make choices. So we all got to stand strong, stand for what we believe in. And not that much power to somebody that doesn’t really affect you, you know what I’m saying, I believe that it’s going to be the same.

Daniel Leone [00:02:18] I realize that he’s a controversial figure, but I feel like a lot of things did work pretty well during his former presidency. My name is Daniel Boone. You know, businesses seem to do well. Maybe a better tax system. I don’t have as much of a negative feeling towards him it as much as most people seem to do around around here especially.

Luna Osleger-Montañez [00:02:50] He blamed immigrants. He blamed women and he blames trans children, among others. And we know that these are lies. My name is Luna. I’m an organizer at the Answer Coalition today. The reason that we’re all here is because there is a real dire need for all sectors of society to unite and fight back against the extreme right billionaire agenda that Trump and his administration represents. Because it’s not immigrants or Palestinian people or women who are our enemy. In fact, it is the billionaires, not just Trump the person that is the class of people who are exploiting and dividing us for their benefit. And what we know as well is that no one is coming to save us.

Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman [00:03:40] Okay. Name and title, please.

Sanika Mahajan [00:03:42] Yeah. Sanika Mahajan. I’m the director of Community Engagement organizing at Mission Action. There’s not a lot we can do as individuals, and you can see that that’s what this ruling class right wing attack is meant to do, is meant to keep us fearful, you know, staying in our own homes, not able to go out and be together and organize. So today is just a kind of a message. We’re sending a message. We’re saying we’re not going to back down. We’re not fearful. We’re going to come together in the streets today. But also, every time they try to attack immigrants, every time they try to attack our queer communities, reproductive rights, our education for.

Jeff Burns [00:04:19] Donald Trump got over 6 million votes in this state and he flipped, you know, a ton of counties. Jeff Berns, chairman of the Contra Costa County Republican Party. I feel like there’s a little bit of momentum change here in the state in terms of from a policy perspective, we still need to overcome as Republicans in the state a little bit of the branding issue. But I’m excited to see what the first two years of the Trump term brings and what that brings for California.

Doris Gentry [00:04:56] I wore my Trump shirt and I was at San Francisco having lunch. And I looked around the room and I saw two other people with Trump shirt on. I have never seen that before. It has totally changed and people are more open. Doris Gentry and I am currently the county chair of the Napa County Republican Central Committee. What changed was the economy. The economy shoved mommies and and people at home. Into the Republican Party, into the awareness that what we have been doing ain’t working. Mommies go into the grocery store and can no longer buy a steak. They’re lucky to buy a ticket. I can sit here and talk to you for an hour about my reasons. You want to see a man like that installed as our next president? He is wise. He is vicious. He is. Is really hitting the ground running. He’s working to buy Greenland, working to negotiate, to take over Canada, working to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. I mean, he has really hit the ground without a box thinking. And it’s very exciting to be there in person.

Jeff Burns [00:06:26] I’m not some hardened ideologue, right? I live in a, you know, in a blue area and have plenty of friends who are Republicans and plenty of friends who are not. And so I to me, I’m looking forward just to a return to common sense. And, you know, common sense doesn’t necessarily mean the norms by which everybody thinks politics should operate out of DC. I mean, just common sense from human beings and and the way we run the government. So I’m excited to see, you know, what what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have with those. I’m excited to see some of these cabinet picks that maybe are a little unconventional and see what they do to shake up DC. I’m excited to see a return to sane economic policies and just just common sense policies across the board.

Alexis Madrigal [00:07:33] We’ve got the chair of the State Assembly’s Health committee. Assembly member Mia Bonta. Welcome.

Asm. Mia Bonta [00:07:38] Thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s not lost on me that in 2025, abortion was mentioned 147 times, and the first mention of it was essentially to declare that abortion care is not health care. We’ve ensconced abortion as a right within our Constitution. We’ve passed over 13 different pieces of legislation in the last legislative cycle alone related to privacy access, making sure that we are protecting the pipeline of health care workers. So what can California do? We can continue where we have been going for a long time.

Alexis Madrigal [00:08:18] And we’ve got Mark Peterson, professor of public policy, political science, health policy and management and law. It’s a lot of things to be a professor of Mark at UCLA, also a senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Welcome, Mark.

Mark Peterson [00:08:30] Thank you. It’s good to be here. We know that President Trump has said very explicitly that in his administration, gender equity and notions of supporting transgender care, for instance, are simply off the table. The other is the administration coming in has made a very big case about how they’re going to go after anyone who has D-I programs, diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Well, that’s the University of California. It’s UCLA. And there’s a lot of federal funding that comes in to the research enterprise on the health care side. And we are an institution that uses DEI procedures.

Rachael Myrow [00:09:07] Why don’t we go next to Colin in San Francisco. Hi, Colin. Thank you for joining us.

Colin [00:09:14] Good morning. My thoughts are about Debrina Kawam, who is identified as the woman who was burned alive on the New York subway by a Guatemalan migrant who had already been ordered deported from the United States. Doesn’t the public have a right to be safe from those people? Doesn’t seem to me that Trump was completely lying when he said that other countries are emptying their mental institutions and sending their mentally ill offenders here to be taken care of.

Kate Munger [00:09:57] My name is Kate Munger. 25 years ago, I started the Threshold Choir, which is formed of choral singers who are called to sing at the bedsides of people who are dying or struggling. And for me, that has included peace marches and protests of various kinds. And eight years ago I was appalled and called a sitting in the same place. We’re going to sing on Saturday the 18th to send prayers, basically songs to inspire and address. More of this spiritual aspects rather than the political aspects of where we are right now.

Kate Munger [00:11:01] So one of the main songs we’ll be singing is When I wrote Words by Ram Dass. We are all just walking each other well. I’ll also be singing a quote from Rumi that goes, If since light is in your heart, you will find your way home. The songs are uplifting, positive, are not going to call any names, but are not going to stand for. Misbehavior in our political system. I’m desperately disappointed that this is where we are, and yet I’m committed to using my voice and the voices that I gather in in resistance in a way that allows us to build. I’m 75 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of different things in my life. And I know that slamming into people with my beliefs is not going to change their beliefs. And I believe that as singing creatures, singing is one of the best ways I know to draw people to what I’m thinking, what I believe, what I hope will happen. So I consider it an invitation.