9/11 funding shows us how to fight back

Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr. cut healthcare funding for 9/11 survivors and first responders. An outcry forced them to reverse course. What lessons can we learn, and what are the 4 steps for fighting back?

It took not quite 23 and a half years, but it finally happened: 9/11 was forgotten. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr. cut 20% of the funding for the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), which offers healthcare for the tens of thousands of Americans who suffered injuries during the rescue and cleanup efforts related to September 11 — including a horrifically high rate of cancers and other diseases from those who inhaled toxins from the debris.

Two research grants were immediately cut (one looking into whether firefighters exposed to 9/11 debris are in fact seeing higher rates of cancer than their peers who were not exposed), and 16 of the program’s 90 employees were laid off.

Then an amazing thing happened: not only was there an outcry from the Resistance, but in part because of that outcry and the media coverage of it, multiple Republican members of Congress from the NYC metro area publicly urged the administration to restore the funding. And they did.

What happened here? And how can we replicate it, to fight back against the worst excesses and damages of the administration?

Step 1 - Identify an issue with bipartisan resonance (hint: this is actually most issues, because most policies effect everyone regardless of party or ideology)

The initial reaction to this story about the WTCHP may be that, well, of course the administration was forced to reverse course here, it was all about 9/11. Yet that isn’t the whole story, nor does it explain why the administration has been stopped by other outcries — including on the blanket freeze for federal assistance programs as well as funding for the National Park Service.

Those predations were not stopped by court challenges. They were stopped by us.

But why those situations? The first key is to find administration actions that affect a broad swath of Americans of all political stripes — and the kicker is that most of Trump and Musk’s cuts fit this description. Thousands and thousands of red-leaning voters are losing their jobs. Admiring the astounding beauty of our national parks, suffering from cancer, falling on hard times, needing healthcare for our children — these are not Republican or Democratic experiences or predicaments.

This is all about framing the issue as one that hurts all Americans and damages our national pride. The 9/11 funding obviously qualified here, but it is not the only issue that will do so.

Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr. forgot all of them and the sacrifices they made and continue to make. We made our officials remember.

Step 2 - Turn up the volume, and make it a big enough story that the mainstream media is compelled to cover it

Here’s a little secret for you: what happens on social and digital media does matter. Immensely. Those who say otherwise are often those who have a vested interest in not having their applecart overturned by the inevitable takeover of the Digital Era. Establishment figures love to punch down at the digital world — precisely because they feel threatened by it.

But the elites doth protest too much. The mainstream media and elected officials are most definitely swayed by what happens on social media — if there is a loud enough outcry, and something is trending, it will have an impact. We cannot always get the establishment to see the light, but we can absolutely make them feel the heat.

More specifically, the mainstream outlets quietly look to social media to understand what the crowd — i.e. their intended audience — is thinking. It’s a real-time polling mechanism. It does not always result in stories going mainstream, but it does so far more often than you may realize.

Every like, every retweet or repost, every comment, every share, every follow, every subscription — all of those numbers feed into the platforms’ algorithms and cause the content to be served up to more and more people. And every new post you make with the same keywords makes the topic trend higher and higher.

This worked wonders on the 9/11 story, guaranteeing that mainstream outlets would cover it — even though the WTCHP is otherwise a tiny program of only 90 employees.

And when there is a combination of social media trending and mainstream outlets picking up the story, we come to the next step.

Step 3 - Republican elected officials feel pressure from their constituents, social media, and mainstream media

Along with influencing the media ether, there is an additional way we can make our voices heard with elected officials — direct action.

We are now beginning to see what that looks like in the second Trump term: multiple instances of Republicans facing town halls in their districts, packed to capacity with angry constituents who have lost their jobs or lost their healthcare, and they are demanding answers. This was the crux of the Indivisible playbook from 2017, adapting the Tea Party playbook from 2009-10 — and we need to run it even more assertively now, because we are up against a more extreme threat.

This can also include emails and phone calls to officials, but those are more easily ignored — and there have been reports that some Republican members of Congress have just stopped answering their phone lines altogether. As an alternative, we should channel some of that calling and emailing to media outlets: calling into radio talk shows, calling into C-SPAN, emailing newspapers and magazines with letters to the editor.

We should still be calling and emailing — but when it comes to public officials, the town halls are the most vital fora, when the officials are willing to hold them rather than cowardly avoiding them.

Step 4 - Look out for Republicans with more purple constituencies - they will be the first ones to speak up, to save their own skins

Plenty of Republicans will face angry constituents, but who will actually be willing to say anything, to buck the party line?

This is about math, fundamentally. Elections are all about math. Show me a purple district or state, where the margins are more thin and the district could shift with the slightest breeze or a bit of a gust, and I’ll show you an elected official who feels a keener need to know which way that wind is blowing. And trust me, they will bend accordingly. Maybe not all the time, but enough that it will make a difference (and on the issues where they don’t bend, we will use them to defeat them).

On the 9/11 funding, the primary outcry came from one Republican member of Congress, Rep. Andrew Garbarino from NY-02 on Long Island — a purple district with an R+3 rating (i.e. a race between two generic candidates would yield a predicted outcome of a three-point win for the Republican). Garbarino himself won more handily in 2024, but two neighboring districts flipped from red to blue last year — and Garbarino knows he could be next in 2026.

The other Republican members of Congress in the NYC metro area quickly followed suit and joined Garbarino’s letter to Trump — this included Reps. Mike Lawler (NY-17, D+3), Nick LaLota (NY-01, R+3), Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11, R+6), and Thomas Kean Jr. (NJ-07, R+1). There were 8 House Republicans on the letter overall. Republicans’ majority in the House is down to 3 seats, so there is no such thing as an expendable member these days. So Trump and the party leadership had to listen. It’s just math.

Why would these GOP members stick their necks out to oppose Trump? Because when the chips are down, they care about themselves. It’s all about their re-election chances. Trump generally helps them win. But as soon as supporting Trump makes them less likely to win, they will break ranks.

Any Republican close enough to NYC who did not speak out on the 9/11 funding would have been handing his or her 2026 opponent a perfect tailor-made attack ad and talking point to hammer them — and in a district with narrow-enough margins, that would be politically suicidal.

This same playbook can be run on any Republican in a purple district or state — on any issue with broad bipartisan appeal.

And we are the ones who get to run this playbook. Not advocacy org lawyers in DC. Not hosts on TV. Not a PAC. Not a congressional challenger next year.

All of us. Right now. And all your need is your phone — plus a few hours to go to a town hall if you’re in the right district.

Let’s go make it happen. Democracy is as democracy does.