The Latte Party

How the #Resistance is following the Tea Party’s playbook to push back against Trump.

- Emily Cadei

TOM MCCLINTOCK should have had an inkling he’d face some blowback just two weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration. On February 4, the Republican congressman—who won his district by 61 percent of the vote in November— encountered such a fierce reception at a town hall in suburban Sacramento, California, he wound up leaving the event with a police escort, dodging a hostile, overflow crowd of rowdy protesters on the sidewalk outside.

Weeks later, McClintock was more prepared for the roughly 1,700 people who packed a high school gymnasium for another town hall in suburban Sacramento, the majority of them angry. The four-term congressman stood firm on his support for repealing Obamacare, building a wall on the border with Mexico and carving out exemptions in discrimination laws for religious organizations that oppose gay marriage.

But McClintock’s critics are standing firm too. They may not be drawing the same press they did the week of Presidents Day—a congressional recess when a flurry of protests greeted lawmakers in their home states and districts, but Doug Todd, one of the organizers of the local group that helped pack the bleachers at Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, California, promises they will continue “showing our numbers in force in public.” Before February, the 33-year-old had never been to a protest, let alone organized one. Now, in addition to his day job, Todd says he’s “almost a full-time activist.”