[This is a submitted opinion article by John Popham, 1st Vice Chair of the Cobb County Democratic Committee]

It’s been a month since Donald Trump took office and began “flooding the zone” with executive orders aimed to implement his Project 2025 as quickly as possible. 

This avalanche of cruelty towards vulnerable populations is meant to be overwhelming and crushing, but the dedication of decent people has shown that Trump is not as invulnerable as he pretends to be. 

Just last week, Caleb Vitello was removed as director of ICE due to his inability to deliver the mass deportations Trump is demanding. According to a CNN interview with Trump’s border Czar (different clown, same circus), the reason for this failure is the result of people on the ground engaging with the migrant community and informing them of their rights. 

The same information Representative Gabriel Sanchez and other Cobb Democrats have been working to provide locally. 

Resistance efforts by everyday people have denied the president an early victory and campaign promise that was built on hatred. When we put in the work, we shatter their propagandized reality and protect our neighbors being persecuted by radicals. 

In a similar instance, Congressman Rich McCormick- who represents a small part of Cobb- faced the music during his recent town hall. His deeply red district showed up in force to call him out for his inaction in the face of Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government. 

While he kept up his smarmy remarks and smug veneer throughout, afterward he has called for information into the process and stated that things are happening too fast. Public opinion and outcry works, because regardless of the misinformation flowing down from the White House, the people still hold incredible power in this democracy. 

These wins aren’t coming about from press releases or by trying to fact check Trump and his cabinet, but by tangible action on the ground.

If we’ve learned anything from the last 10-years it’s that religiously fact checking every half-baked claim that comes oozing out of MAGA mouths does absolutely nothing. They do not care about facts, only their feelings.

For example, the numbers Ginny Ehrhart provided the Marietta Daily Journal last week on immigration were misrepresented. Whether this was done intentionally or unintentionally is anyone’s guess, but we have our theories.

Her published claim included a bulleted list of what she said were the “verified crimes associated with criminal aliens that were released into this country under the Biden administration,” which is an entirely false statement. The numbers she shared did not match those from the 2024 ICE Annual Report where she claimed to have gotten them, but even if they did they showed the totals of convictions and charges of the entire noncitizen population and not just the undocumented. There is also nothing behind her claim that they were released after they were convicted. 

The page prior to ICE’s arrest information provides a better look at crime committed by noncitizens and proves Ehrhart is only fearmongering. The actual total number of noncitizens arrested in 2024 was 113,431 (a 33.5% decrease from 2023), and those arrests only account for 1.03% of the noncitizen population in the United States and 0.00032% of the total national population. 

Did it take long to read the four paragraphs preceding the table she cited in MDJ’s Around Town? Certainly not. Could we fact check every piece of misinformation she spat out? Absolutely, it’s always fun to dunk on republicans because they make it so easy to do so. 

The thing is though, it wouldn’t even matter to someone like Ehrhart. So instead of continuing to wrestle with a pig in the mud of an opinion column, we are going to continue advocating for our community and celebrate the work being done by the Cobb County Democrats at the local and state level. 

Here’s just a few things Cobb Democrats are doing to make life better for all Georgians:
 

• Connecting voters with their future elected representatives at the District 2 Online Candidate Discussion on Thursday
• District 28 (Mableton and Austell) Senator Donzella James hosted an Autism Awareness Day at the capitol to raise awareness for her bill SB 211: Autism Missing Person Alert System Act. The bill is cosponsored by District 33 (Dobbins ARB, Powder Springs, and parts of Marietta and Smyrna) Senator Michael “Doc” Rhett. 
• District 42 representative Gabriel Sanchez of Smyrna put forward HB 343: The Georgia Living Wage Act
• District 35 (Kennesaw and Acworth) representative Lisa Campbell and allies rallied at the capitol this week in support of public education
• Marietta’s district 43 Representative Solomon Adesanya is working to reform the Georgia criminal justice system with his legislation, HB 301: The Time Served Act of 2025
• Former candidates Laura Judge and Andrew Cole are launching podcast about local education

That is what real work looks like. It’s not griping or petty arguments, but actual steps to make people’s lives better. Resisting authoritarianism is not a hopeless endeavor, but we need to make sure we are supporting those doing the work as well.

So far, GOP leaders have only allowed two bills through committee and neither of them were one of the ones mentioned above. They intentionally hurt their own constituents by prioritizing culture war bandwagon bills over legislation that would make a positive impact on our state.

Let’s not stop at only resisting the hateful policies coming from Washington D.C., let’s make sure we are pushing back at the state and local level too.

We are not powerless as long as we keep speaking up.

JP Popham

1st Vice Chair

Cobb County Democratic Committee