Bernie Sanders took the stage in downtown Omaha, Neb., last Friday night and surveyed the roaring crowd.
“Whoa!” Vermont’s senior senator exclaimed.
The turnout was far larger than Sanders’ team had expected. It forced a last-minute move from a modest union building to a larger 2,600-seat venue at a Marriott hotel. Even then, 800 people had to be diverted to watch on screens in an overflow area.
A much larger audience, 190,000, tuned in via live stream.
At the podium, Sanders smiled broadly, waved and thanked his audience for the rock-star reception.
“Thank you, Bernie!” a woman yelled.
The scene was reminiscent of the independent senator’s campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2016 and 2020 elections, when his rollicking rallies drew as many as 28,000 fans.
This time, though, Sanders wasn’t running for higher office. Instead, his Midwest barnstorming was summed up by a sign on the podium facing the audience: “Fight Oligarchy.”
Since the second inauguration of Donald Trump, many in the nation have watched in dismay as the president has issued a flurry of divisive directives to advance his “Make America Great Again” agenda. These include executive orders attempting to strike down birthright citizenship; roll back climate initiatives; and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, to name a few.
He’s also empowered billionaire Elon Musk, who spent $270 million to help get Trump elected, to slash the size of the federal government, a task that Musk has undertaken with legally questionable tactics and chaotic glee.
Democrats, the minority in both the U.S. House and Senate, have struggled to mount an effective, unified opposition to Trump. While top Dems have made increasingly forceful and dire warnings about the risks to democracy, vital social programs, the economy and the climate, many people have felt not only outraged but also powerless.
Even before Sanders hit the road last week, there were indications that his crusade against oligarchy — a government where power is concentrated in the hands of a privileged few — was gaining momentum. Over the past three months, the 83-year-old grandfather has picked up 1 million new followers on TikTok. One of his posts was viewed 30 million times.
Sanders appears uniquely poised to step up. With a practiced message that boosts workers while attacking billionaires — advanced by his celebrity status and team of experienced organizers — the Vermonter is emerging as one of Trump’s most potent critics and a key voice in the burgeoning opposition. Sanders used his old campaign playbook last week, heading to Omaha and Iowa City, Iowa, on a tour his team called “Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here.”
The urgency, Sanders told his audience, cannot be overstated.
“This country today, under Trump, faces a series of crises unprecedented in our modern history,” he told the Omaha crowd. “And what we do now will impact not only our lives but the lives of our kids, grandchildren, future generations and whether the planet itself survives.”
“I’m here in Omaha because the time to act is now!” Sanders thundered. “The time to fight back is now!”
The crowd roared in response.
Old Man With a Plan
Sanders wasn’t just an old man reliving his glory days. He had purposely gone to the home districts of vulnerable Republican House members to pressure them to stand up to Trump. His goal was not modest — just to return the nation’s political power to the working class, where Sanders has long argued it belongs.
Omaha is considered a blue dot in an otherwise red state. The city voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, earning one of the state’s five Electoral College votes. U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican, represents the city and surrounding areas.
Sanders’ stop in Iowa City the next day was intended to influence U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Weeks, a Republican who won reelection last year by a mere 800 votes.
The GOP holds 218 seats in the House of Representatives to the Democrats’ 215. That’s a razor-thin margin, and Sanders urged supporters to press Miller-Weeks and Bacon to vote against a critical bill.
Known as the budget reconciliation bill, the legislation would result in “savage cuts to programs that working-class people desperately need,” Sanders said.
On Tuesday, the House pressed forward with a dramatic late-night vote on the bill. It only needed a majority to pass and so was immune from the threat of a filibuster that would require 60 senators to overcome. The margin was so tight that Republicans delayed a vote on New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s appointment as ambassador to the United Nations until after the budget votes were cast.
House Republicans were eyeing up to $2 trillion in spending cuts, which would put all manner of social programs at risk, including Medicaid, Sanders warned at his rally. That would gut funding for community health centers, where 30 million people get their care, Sanders told the crowd in Omaha. It would also make many seniors ineligible for nursing home care, shifting those significant expenses to their families, he noted.
But if just two Republicans in the House refuse to support it, “that terrible bill is defeated,” Sanders said.
“What I’m asking you to do is make sure that your congressman, Mr. Bacon, is one of those two Republicans,” Sanders said.
He employed the same strategy in Iowa City the next day, urging the audience to demand that Miller-Meeks vote against the bill. Voters should insist that their representatives hold town hall meetings to explain themselves, he advised.
Many attendees said they thought Sanders was employing exactly the right strategy and that Bacon might well break with Trump on key issues, including the budget. The retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general pushed back last week on Trump’s false statement that Ukraine started the war with Russia.
“I think what he said is wrong, and it’s a shame,” Bacon told CNN. “Russia’s on the bad side here, and we need a president with moral clarity when it comes to this war.”
There is growing evidence that Republicans are facing a broader backlash from voters as the potential impact of Trump’s cuts sink in. The New York Times reported last week that even in deep-red rural Texas, Republican representatives faced a barrage of questions from constituents who are frustrated and angry with Trump’s agenda and tactics.
Tim Conn, who went to the Omaha speech, said he had been feeling hopeless before it. After working hard trying to get Democrat Kamala Harris elected president and then watching Trump return to power with a literal vengeance, he didn’t know how he could make a difference.
Inspired by Sanders, Conn resolved to contact Bacon’s office and demand that he vote against the budget bill.
“Bernie makes me feel that maybe it’s closer than we think,” Conn said.
Attendee Keleigh Scheuermann said she has also felt powerless over the past two months and has spent more time than she cares to admit “yelling at the TV.”
The 58-year-old unemployed health care worker, who sported a pink pussy hat, said she was eager to hear Sanders’ ideas for opposing the rising oligarchy. She had some of her own. She planned to join a nationwide campaign to not buy anything from Amazon on February 28 — an effort to send a message to billionaires such as company founder Jeff Bezos.
“They have no humility or shame, so you can only hit them in the pocketbook,” Scheuermann said.
Amy Bova, another attendee, was skeptical about Republicans opposing Trump’s efforts. She had watched with dismay as Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), an Iraq War combat veteran and sexual assault survivor, bowed to pressure in December to support Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth to serve as defense secretary. Hegseth was accused in 2017 of sexually assaulting a woman. Though never charged criminally, he later paid $50,000 to settle her civil claim, which he maintains was unfounded.
“That’s when I knew that we were in big trouble,” Bova said.
Still, she was pinning hope on Vermont’s senior senator, whom she remembers from her days in Plattsburgh, N.Y., in the 1980s, when Sanders was mayor of Burlington. Back then, she didn’t care for him.
Bova moved back to Nebraska years ago and became a teacher. Now, at 63, her views of Sanders have changed.
He is exactly what this country needs right now. Amy Bova
“He is exactly what this country needs right now,” Bova said.
Sanders’ message of standing up for the working class and against Trump’s efforts to dismantle the programs that serve them, such as Social Security and Medicaid, is hitting home like never before, she said.
“Bernie is genuine, and I think people see that, which I think makes him the right messenger at this point,” Bova said.
By the People, for the People
The core themes in Sanders’ speeches in Omaha and Iowa City were not new. Even the title of the tour was recycled, borrowed from his 2018 book Where We Go From Here.
In that text, Sanders urged people to demand policies that serve working Americans, decried inequality and warned of a nation rapidly becoming an oligarchy.
But while he stressed the core themes that vaulted him to national prominence in 2016, he has retooled and sharpened his message for the current political moment.
He highlighted for his listeners the clearer-than-ever connection between the billionaires with whom Trump has surrounded himself and the budget cuts Republicans are now pursuing.
The three richest people in the nation, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, all attended Trump’s inauguration, as did 13 other billionaires he appointed to his cabinet, Sanders noted.
“It’s not just the rich are getting richer while working families struggle,” he said. “Oligarchy is about political power in a way that we have never seen in America.”
All of this is taking place, he said, while working people are struggling to make ends meet. He noted that 60 percent of families live paycheck to paycheck, with 20 million living on $15 an hour or less. Eighty-five million Americans are uninsured, with 60,000 dying every year because they can’t afford a doctor, he said. And 25 percent of seniors live on less than $15,000 per year.
It’s unconscionable to propose gutting programs that help poor people as a way to pay for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, he said.
Sanders reserved his sharpest ire for Musk. As the head of the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk, the richest man in the world and now one of the most powerful, chose to dismantle a foreign aid program, USAID, that served the poorest and least powerful.
The richest people in the world are saying to the poorest people in the world that the United States is not there for you. That is a disgrace. Sen. Bernie Sanders
“So, the richest people in the world are saying to the poorest people in the world that the United States is not there for you. That is a disgrace,” Sanders said.
The crowd agreed, booing loudly whenever Musk’s name was uttered.
“Elon is a fascist!” a man in Omaha yelled.
The fact that Trump has given his largest campaign contributor the power to slash the very government that regulates his businesses is the exact definition of oligarchy, Sanders said.
Trump and his billionaire friends are trying to project power to make people feel they have none, but they have plenty, he said.
“Our determination right now is to fulfill Lincoln’s vision of a government of the people, by the people, for the people — not a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires,” Sanders said. “We will not allow that to happen.”
‘They’ve Been Bamboozled’
Supporters started lining up outside the 725-seat Englert Theatre in frigid downtown Iowa City before 8 a.m. last Saturday, even though the doors didn’t open until 10:30.
By then, the line stretched down three city blocks and organizers were scrambling to locate an overflow venue. They found one above a market a few blocks away, and around 11 a.m., staff began diverting people there.
Fear not, they were told. Sanders would speak twice, once at the Englert as planned and again to the overflow afterward. Between both venues, an estimated 2,000 people turned out to hear him, according to a spokesperson.
Standing on the street in front of the theater, Pat Muller said he was disappointed he couldn’t get in but not terribly surprised by the turnout. Iowa City is a liberal college town, and there has been intense and growing anger.
“He’s tapping into the fact that a lot of people have figured out that they’ve been bamboozled,” Muller said.
Brian Gibbs said his life has been upended by the administration. A park ranger at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeast Iowa, he was one of hundreds of National Park Service employees fired on Valentine’s Day with no warning.
Gibbs has become something of a local hero after penning a viral Facebook post about the heartbreak he felt at losing his dream job. He spoke at the theater before Sanders.
“I am the ‘fat on the bone,'” Gibbs said. “I am being trimmed as a consequence of the popular vote.”
Other speakers denounced cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs that will make it harder to provide care and to the National Labor Relations Board that will make it harder for workers to unionize.
After Sanders spoke, the crowd spilled onto the sidewalk. College students Mia Edison, 19, and Nora McCloy, 18, emerged bundled up against the cold but energized. Sanders was inspiring, they said, but the event also felt like the community coming together in mutual support.
Edison, who identifies as queer, said it’s daunting to think that people like her have to convince a handful of Republicans to stand up to Trump, but she thinks it can be done. After she came out, her Republican parents switched parties, she said.
“We’re all just collectively realizing that if we want change, we need to stand up and do it ourselves,” she said.
Selfies With the Senator
Sanders is not the only politician standing up to Trump. The two other members of the Vermont delegation, Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), have also forcefully condemned his actions.
On the floor of the House on Tuesday, Balint did not mince words over the budget bill. “They are attacking the very programs that working- and middle-class families rely on in the country,” Balint said. “It is a betrayal.”
Welch says Trump is on a “rampage of illegality” and has overstepped his powers. Balint has labeled what Trump is doing “an attempted coup.” Both have spoken at rallies in Washington, D.C., to support federal workers and have held roundtables back in Vermont.
“Vermonters have to know we’re fighting. They’re just freaked out about what’s going on,” Welch said.
But neither Welch nor Balint enjoys Sanders’ national political prominence, something on full display as Sanders headed home last Saturday. After flying to Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Sanders was crowded by supporters as he got ready to board his connecting flight to Burlington.
Fran Hodgins, a 33-year-old state worker from Waterbury, jumped at the chance to have a photo taken with the senator as she held her 17-month-old daughter, Wren.
So did Mika Hansen, a student from Manchester Center who was returning from a ski vacation in Canada. Hansen said she worries about the planet her generation will inherit if Trump succeeds in gutting the departments that protect the nation’s forests and rolling back the nation’s climate policies.
She doesn’t care that Sanders is an 83-year-old white man. It’s what he says and how he inspires people that matters, she said.
“He has spent his life in politics,” she said, “and knows how to advocate for the political change that our country desperately needs.”
Sanders was back home in Burlington when House Speaker Mike Johnson brought the bill to the House floor.
Sanders was right about one thing — it was a squeaker. But in the end, his strategy hadn’t been enough to flip votes. The GOP prevailed, and the bill passed by a 217-215 vote. A single Republican, from Kentucky, voted no.
What’s next? Sanders, Welch and Balint will be talking with Vermonters in a telephone town hall on Wednesday, February 26, at 6:30 p.m. They have already received 800 questions, and Sanders said in a phone interview that he expects thousands to listen in. The discussion will be live streamed on Sanders’ Facebook page.
Sanders made it clear that he would keep on fighting. He said: “I think people all over this country — red states, blue states, purple states — are sick and tired of what they’re seeing coming out of the mouth of the administration.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Bern Rekindled | In a new Trump era, Bernie Sanders’ crusade against oligarchy is resonating with Americans once again”
Related Stories
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!