This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
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When the olive green charter bus pulled into the suburban civic center in a conservative area east of Cincinnati just after 9 p.m. on Friday, the women were ready.
They loaded duffels and coolers and bags of snacks into the bus. They carried handmade “Impeach, Convict, Remove” signs, transgender pride flags, and the red hooded cloaks and white bonnets made famous by “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the dystopian feminist novel adapted into a popular Hulu series.
Cincinnati was the first of three stops in a “turn and burn” trip from Ohio to the nation’s capital for a “Remove the Regime” protest — and it didn’t follow the most logical route. Stops in suburbs outside Columbus and Cleveland added hours to the drive. The women didn’t seem to care.
The passengers piled into the dark bus — a dozen or so in Cincinnati, 14 near Columbus, 20 on the outskirts of Cleveland. Some of the women brought along friends, a few came with their spouses and others traveled on their own. There were brief introductions among seatmates as each new group boarded and everyone settled in; a couple of them built blanket tents to block the cold air that seeped in and the lights from cars passing the bus on the highway.
They would need all the rest they could get. This protest trip would involve two overnight bus trips in 36 hours and just 12 hours on the ground.
For people like Judy Routhier, who boarded in Cleveland, the trip to Washington was the latest in a string of public efforts to oppose the Trump administration. This mother of four married to a military veteran said it was her 72nd protest since February. She brought laminated signs that read, “Hump-y Trump-y Must Fall! He’s on the Epstein List” and “This ‘Piggy’ Won’t be Quiet! IMPEACH. CONVICT. REMOVE.”
Deann Ragsdale, who boarded in Cincinnati, was embarking on her first public action despite her opposition to just about every facet of Republican Donald Trump’s presidency from its start. The longtime labor-and-delivery nurse and mother of three teenagers — one of them transgender — keeps a grueling hospital schedule. The protest happened to fall on a weekend off. “Something has to change, and we have to start somewhere,” she said.
Like at many events opposing Trump and his administration, the majority of the bus passengers were women, though a couple who spoke to The 19th noted that men are increasingly joining them in their local protest efforts. The women said they were spurred into action by the administration’s moves to restrict reproductive rights, its attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people, its hostility to immigrants and its disregard for the rule of law.
The “Remove the Regime” event was organized by member organizations of the Removal Coalition, a grassroots effort just like the Ohio bus trip. The trip had come together just days earlier, when a woman from Florida raised more than $30,000 through crowdfunding to “find affordable buses and coordinate seats so that no one is left behind just because they can’t pay for a ticket.” Someone else created a “Get to DC” page on Facebook to connect travelers. There were also local events in places like Charleston, South Carolina, and Fairmont, West Virginia, for those who could not make it to Washington.
When the bus pulled into Union Station, near the Capitol building, just before 9 a.m. on Saturday, Jen Mazzuckelli, who acted as point person for the Cincinnati group, changed into her Handmaid cloak and headed to the Lincoln Memorial. Like many on the bus and at the larger protest, Mazzuckelli is involved with a grassroots political movement known as 50501 — as in 50 protests, 50 states, one movement.
“If somebody says ‘50501,’ you know they’re in the fight, you know they’re in the resistance,” Mazzuckelli, 52, said. “I feel like we’re in Star Wars.”
Mazzuckelli, a mother of three who extracted herself from an abusive marriage, knows on a personal level how looming Republican cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid health insurance and SNAP nutrition assistance might impact her exurban Ohio community. After her divorce, she said she relied on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, which provided cash assistance for necessities until she started receiving child support. She currently receives disability benefits due to a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. She spends more and more of her time protesting the Trump administration and is weighing another run for office after an unsuccessful bid last year for her county’s GOP-dominated board of commissioners. For now, she tries to be a thorn in their side, showing up to meetings.
As Mazzuckelli and other women dressed like Handmaids sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial alongside a massive copy of the U.S. Constitution, she thought to herself: “This will probably end up in history books, if we have real history books … It’s a historical moment, and I’m glad I was able to be a part of it instead of watching it on TV.”
“Remove the Regime” was a three-day action that included lobbying, trainings, an event honoring the military and its veterans, then the rally and a march. There were music performances from the Dropkick Murphys, among others, and a sold-out “Comedy Church” fundraiser with a set from North Carolina’s Cliff Cash, who is known for humor skewering Southern conservatism. Cash was one of the first to join the Removal Coalition, founded by Jessica Denson, a former staffer on Trump’s 2016 campaign who brought a class-action lawsuit over its use of nondisclosure agreements. Rep. Al Green, a Texas progressive, spoke at the rally, as did House of Representatives contender Kat Abughazaleh from Illinois.
The protest events came after a particularly tumultuous week for Trump that highlighted his past treatment of and continued hostile rhetoric directed at women. After months of delay tactics on behalf of GOP leaders, Congress voted on Tuesday to compel the Justice Department to release its files on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump snapped, “Quiet! Quiet, piggy,” at a female Bloomberg News reporter who asked about releasing the Epstein files aboard Air Force One. But then he reversed course, writing on his social media platform, Truth Social: “I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.”
Epstein references abounded on signs at the rally; Routhier, who was also wearing a fuzzy pig hat, was one of hundreds who had worked Trump’s exchange with the reporter into their protest gear. A woman from Northern Virginia carried a “Quiet, Piggy, lil’ fascist piggy” sign. A woman in a Trump mask with pig ears and a snout held a sign that urged “IMPEACH the Piggy!!” as she stood next to her Air Force veteran husband. At least a half dozen protesters were dressed up as Miss Piggy from The Muppet Show.
It wasn’t the largest event opposing Trump, but it was meaningful for those in attendance.
Amber Curry, a 36-year-old from Georgia, said the president’s treatment of women was a big factor in drawing her to Washington for her first-ever protest. Her husband is a disabled veteran and her family of six relies on programs like SNAP — which disproportionately serves women, children and older and disabled Americans — to feed themselves and make ends meet. Their benefits, disrupted during the record-breaking government shutdown that ended earlier this month, still aren’t back to normal. Curry warned that she might cry when talking about her reasons for attending the protest. “It’s so beautiful, people here are listening, because no one around me listens,” she said.
After the speakers and musical performances wrapped, the Miss Piggies and the inflatable eagles, polar bears, frogs, sharks, foxes and at least one Cookie Monster lined up behind the Handmaids and began to march. When Marine Force One flew directly overhead as Trump returned to the White House from an aerial tour with Jack Nicklaus of a planned golf course near Joint Base Andrews, fists and middle fingers rose into the air.
At the end of the day, the women from Ohio made their way back to Union Station, convening in the basement food court to wait for the bus. They rolled up their signs ahead of the journey back to America’s Heartland. There was a buzz of excitement as they shared their experiences.
Erin Nezi, 45, said she was initially drawn to protest the Trump administration because she “felt a camaraderie with all of these women,” referring to the Handmaids, who had by then changed out of their cloaks. Nezi’s first local protest was in February; in recent weeks, she’d begun making trips to the nation’s capital. She is part of a group of women trying to build a Handmaid “army” in rural and exurban southern Ohio.
Nezi is currently unemployed after spending years on an assembly line building steering wheels for Ford vehicles. Her husband is a fully disabled Navy veteran dependent on benefits from Veterans Affairs. She said she is protesting for him — and also for other women like her, for her LGBTQ+ family members, for immigrants in her community and for her 69-year-old mother, who relies on subsidized housing. A constant question that runs through her mind, she said, is, “When is it going to come for me?”
The women boarded just after 9 p.m. The bus made its way out of Washington, crossed Maryland and Pennsylvania, and then stopped in Cleveland, Columbus and finally Cincinnati as the sun rose over the horizon. They thanked the bus driver, also a woman. She thanked them for going to the protest.
Routhier said her 73rd protest is already planned.
Ragsdale is considering making a video to share about how she assembled her sturdy, reusable sign.
Mazzuckelli wants to pursue “deep organizing” in rural, conservative pockets of Ohio, perhaps in conjunction with the Working Families Party.
“My idea is to get a committed group here in Clermont [County] and start pushing eastward,” she said.
