Massachusetts may be a reliably blue state, but my hometown of Marshfield is not.
In 2016, then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton decisively won the state in her face-off against President Donald Trump, earning nearly 61 percent of the vote. But in Marshfield—a suburb of 25,000 people, located about 30 miles south of Boston, where I spent my childhood before moving to New York City about a decade ago—the race went almost exactly down the middle.
Clinton won 47.5 percent of the town, and Trump won about 47 percent. Marshfield has followed a similar pattern since then, with the town’s inhabitants voting for Trump at a higher proportion than Massachusetts voters overall.
While Trump’s popularity in Marshfield dipped slightly in 2020, he regained his 2016 levels of support in 2024, when 47 percent of the town voted for him and 51 percent supported Vice President Kamala Harris.
Nonetheless, a massive crowd turned out in Marshfield on Saturday to protest Trump’s second term and Elon Musk‘s takeover of the federal government. It was one of the thousands of such protests happening in big cities and small towns across the country. The energy of the opposition to Trump was apparent as I drove downtown, into the heart of the protest, past the town hall and a strip mall with pizza and burger joints. Cheering locals lined the street in front of a Dollar Tree and CVS Pharmacy, holding signs and American flags as passing cars honked.
“I came because I don’t want them to take away the Social Security,” #HandsOff rally-goer Jim Carson told our reporter @JulianneMcShane. “That’s stealing it—we all paid already!”
Julianne returned to her small hometown of Marshfield (pop. 25,000) which votes more red than… pic.twitter.com/KPr4uX5yjw
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 5, 2025
Amongst the locals I talked to, the scale of the support—especially in a town like Marshfield—was indicative of the growing opposition to Trump and Musk. “I’m so heartened, because it’s just so upsetting how many people are hurting,” Patty Drogue, a resident of the nearby town of Norwell, told me.
For Drogue, the hurt is personal. A retired federal worker, she worked for more than 20 years with Head Start programs, which support low-income children. Project 2025 recommends eliminating and alleges the program is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and offers “little or no long-term academic value for children”—despite ample research that shows otherwise. The future of Head Start is even more uncertain after Tuesday’s mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which houses the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the office that administers the program. As a result of cutting Head Start, Drogue said, “there’s going to be a lot of kids and families going hungry; there’s going to be a lot of people that don’t make it through high school and can’t earn a living.”
“The Head Start programs in the New England region now have no one to go to help them get the money that was promised to them. There’s no one there—they just fired everybody,” she added. The Boston Head Start office is one of five that will be closed following Tuesday’s layoffs, according to the National Head Start Association.
More from Patty & Sue on why they came out today:
— Julianne McShane (@juliannemcshane.bsky.social) April 5, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Indeed, the impact of the chaos Trump and Musk are unleashing across the federal government was what drove several protesters out into the rain, they told me.
Drogue’s friend, Sue Fitzgerald, said her daughter will soon graduate college with a biomedical engineering degree. She’s concerned about RFK Jr.’s dismantling of HHS, which has also included cuts to some of the offices that work on reproductive health and disability issues, as my colleagues and I have reported. “We need to save healthcare, but also scientific research,” said Fitzgerald, who lives in the bordering (and slightly redder) town of Pembroke.
Peter Brown, who said he is a retired OB-GYN and lives in Norwell, is most worried about the attacks on the health system, including RFK’s boosting of anti-vaccination viewpoints; slashing of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for critical research; undermining of efforts to support maternal health; and gutting of the FDA, among others. “I’m horrified that our country used to lead the world in research, and now it’s decimated,” Brown said.
Peter Brown, a retired OBGYN from the nearby town of Norwell, on why he came out:
— Julianne McShane (@juliannemcshane.bsky.social) April 5, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Protesters said they are also disturbed by Trump and Musk’s dismantling of USAID, the agency that provided foreign humanitarian aid and would have helped the recovery effort following the recent devastating earthquake in Myanmar, as I recently reported. “I’m a humanitarian,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s more important to me than money.” Gutting USAID, in her view, was “terrible.”
“Government is not a business—it is here to work for and with the people,” added Christine, a protester from Marshfield who declined to provide her last name. “We’ve taken away any good that America has done.” She works in the medical field and, like many American consumers, expects Trump’s tariffs will affect her wallet.
“The cost of my supplies will definitely go up because gloves and masks are made in China,” Christine said. “I tried to prepare for it, but I don’t think I even ordered enough in advance.”
Another economic concern for protesters: cuts to their safety nets. “I don’t want them to take away the Social Security that we already paid—that’s stealing,” said Jim Carson, who said he retired after nearly 50 years working in the newspaper business. Trump, Carson added, “promised he wouldn’t touch it—but he’s going to let Musk cut it, so he can say, ‘it wasn’t me.’”
Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, spearheaded the firing of about 7,000 workers at the Social Security Administration, and plans to fire potentially thousands more in the coming weeks, the Washington Post reports. Musk has also repeatedly spread disinformation about the program, including calling it a “Ponzi scheme.”
Jim Carson’s worried about Social Security being cut. “I was happy until Trump and Musk came along,” he says, “and now, we gotta stand up and fight.”
— Julianne McShane (@juliannemcshane.bsky.social) April 5, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Several protesters said they want members of Congress to be as fired up in opposition to Trump’s agenda as they are. “I would like our Republican senators to show up and do their job and remember that they were put in that place by us—not Donald Trump,” said Terri, a Marshfield resident who declined to gave her last name. Terri described herself as a “lifelong independent” who has historically leaned conservative, but Trump and Musk’s antics led her to register as a Democrat on Friday, she said. “It’s disturbing how much we are not taking care of our people and how much we’re going to lose if we don’t stop this.”
Christine, the protester who worked in the medical field, and Terri’s friend, said she wishes Republican members of Congress voted against Trump’s unqualified cabinet members. But she’s finding hope in how some Democrat members are openly resisting: “Look at what Cory Booker just did; look at what Bernie Sanders and AOC are doing,” she said.
“Where are the Republicans? Where’s the outrage” asked Erin Herman, a resident of the nearby town of Cohasset, who works in sales. “Right now we just have to hold him to basic standards—that’s really what we’re asking for. Follow the Constitution, follow the law, and quit trouncing on our rights.”
The crowd cheered at honking cars even as the rain got heavier and the air got colder; by about 2:30 p.m. EST, they dispersed. Deborah Cornwall, one of the protest’s organizers, saw the success of the event as a sign of a shift. “Marshfield has been very red,” she told me, “but attendees today may be changing that in coming elections.”
The protesters I spoke to were pushed out into the dreary afternoon because, like Carson, the retired newspaper worker worried about cuts to Social Security, they felt they had no choice. “I was happy until Trump and Musk came along,” he said, “and now, we gotta stand up and fight.”
