More than 80 people lined Roanoke Avenue in Riverhead Monday, a nationwide day of “Not My President’s Day” protests that saw thousands take to the streets coast-to-coast to denounce the Trump administration’s actions during its first four weeks.
Organized by a Rocky Point resident who identified herself as Tiffany R., the Riverhead protest drew residents from across eastern Suffolk.
“We are committed to standing up against fascism and showing our commitment to democracy,” the organizer said in a written statement. “We are joining in with people all over the country today for a National Day of Protest against a corrupt regime,” the statement said, calling out the Trump administration for “a series of anti-democratic and illegal actions.”
Paper and cardboard signs that protesters struggled to control against blasts of bitter cold gusts of wind targeted both President Donald Trump and businessman Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, a close Trump ally and the top contributor to Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Protesters accused the president of overstepping the bounds of his constitutional authority in a series of executive orders signed since he took office Jan. 20, including by impounding funding appropriated by Congress and firing inspectors general without providing Congress with a 30-day notice mandated by statute, among other things.
Trump appointed Musk to head the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which despite its name is not a federal government department. Dubbed “DOGE,” the new entity is a “temporary organization” the president established by executive order on Inauguration Day with the stated purpose of “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
Musk and a team of hand-picked software engineers have accessed databases maintained by various federal agencies, including the Treasury Department’s payment system, the Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. DOGE, with the support of the White House, is now seeking access to the IRS Integrated Data Retrieval System, which includes the private tax return information of hundreds of millions of American citizens and businesses, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
It remains unclear what DOGE is authorized to do with the data being collected. The DOGE Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight said last week after its first hearing it will work with DOGE to “root out waste, shore up vulnerable payment systems and fully investigate schemes to defraud taxpayers.”
The unprecedented access to data across multiple agencies, including personal information about private citizens, has alarmed citizens and civil rights groups, and sparked a number of lawsuits aimed at stopping it.
Musk’s and DOGE’s actions have gone beyond accessing data and making recommendations for modernizing, improving and making more efficient government software. They include, with the cooperation of Trump appointees at federal agencies, firing thousands of federal employees and freezing billions of dollars in federal funding, canceling federal contracts and dismantling two federal agencies — the U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal federal agency for humanitarian assistance to other countries, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which regulates financial products and services, educates consumers and enforces federal consumer financial laws.
Trump appointees, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, former member of Congress representing Suffolk County’s First Congressional District, have credited DOGE with helping them identify and cancel programs and contracts they say are wasteful. On Feb. 14, Zeldin posted on X, Musk’s social media platform, that with DOGE’s help, he has canceled “wasteful DEI and environmental justice contracts,” saving taxpayers, he said, $60 million.
“They’re supposed to be following and looking for corruption and fraud, but they’re just cutting programs and jobs without any thought of the consequences,” protester Claudette Bianco of Calverton said.
Protesters condemned these and other actions as “illegal and anti-democratic.”
“We will not allow our democracy to fail,” the organizer of yesterday’s protest outside Riverhead Town Hall said.
Protesters lining the sidewalk on Roanoke Avenue, along the Riverhead Town Hall parking lot, were buoyed by the frequent sound of car horns honking in support and the thumbs-up gestures of passing drivers and their passengers. A handful of other passing motorists made their feelings known with other hand gestures and a couple opened their windows to shout down the protesters as they passed.
Yesterday’s protest, which lasted a little over an hour, remained peaceful.
“It’s great to see so many people here in this freezing weather to protest what’s going on,” former Riverhead Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said.
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