“Vote Here” signs line the University Memorial Center’s walls on Nov. 8, 2022 for the midterm elections. (Io Hartman/CU Independent)
Surrounded by a group of friends, Anna Adams sat down on Tuesday evening, hopeful, to watch the 2024 presidential election.
After some time, the group had to turn their attention elsewhere – a lighthearted children’s movie – as they grew too anxious to continue watching.
When Adams’ roommate returned home, they asked the group to turn the TV back to the polls. It was just in time to watch Pennsylvania be called for former President Donald Trump, effectively eliminating Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the presidency.
The next day was difficult.
“(I’ve) kind of been on the verge of tears the whole day,” she said. “In some classes, I’ve been crying with my peers, and then other times I’m just feeling completely numb.”
Adams is the vice president of Students Against Campus Sexual Assault at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is particularly concerned with President-elect Trump’s history of sexual misconduct.
Over multiple decades, Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by about two dozen women, and in May 2023 he was found liable for sexual abuse. Trump has denied all allegations.
“His election in (to) office is really teaching women that coming forward about sexual assault does not bring change and that when women choose to go forward with sexual assault cases – which are already really scary choices to make – that they’re not being heard,” Adams said. “(It’s) teaching young men that violence against women is not reprimandable.”
Adams isn’t alone. In the days following the election, students and community leaders across Boulder expressed concern for what a second Trump presidency could mean for women, the LGBTQ+ community, climate change and foreign policy. Others expressed excitement over what the win could mean for the economy and the Republican party in Boulder. Most agree the election is a stark reminder that the country remains divided.
Women, LGBTQ leaders concerned with Trump’s “violent rhetoric”
For Adams, Trump’s policies regarding reproductive rights are of the utmost concern. Trump has largely taken responsibility for the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which returned questions of reproductive rights back to state governments and spurred a crackdown on abortions across 21 states.
“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone,” he said on his social platform Truth.
On election night, Colorado passed Amendment 79, enshrining abortion access into the state constitution and repealing a 1984 ban on the use of public funds for abortions.
“I think that we are in a uniquely good situation in Colorado because we have a government that represents us and that believes in a woman’s right to choose,” Adams said. “We recently codified that right… just this past election, but I fear for the women who are in red states.”
The passage of Amendment 79 was heartening for Adams, but she said she felt these “small wins” were overshadowed by Trump’s presidential victory.
“I think that small change is still progress, but it’s very disheartening to see someone who has had such violent rhetoric against women maintain a position of power,” she said.
It was a sentiment echoed by many other women in Boulder County during the days following the election. One is Debbie Pope, the CEO of YWCA Boulder County, a local advocacy organization working to eliminate racism and empower women and girls.
“This is non-partisan and non-political,” Pope said. “I do worry that when language like that from leaders happens, that people believe that that’s been acceptable, and I think, as we all know, that isn’t acceptable.”
Pope emphasized that, despite Harris’ loss in the presidential race, her campaign and position as the first woman and person of color to be vice president have been impactful for women, particularly women of color.
“We have to remember that that is a milestone,” she said. “There’s still a lot more work that apparently really needs to be done in terms of breaking down systems of patriarchy and misogyny that are still very present.”
A protestor holds up a sign in front of the Boulder County Courthouse at a protest to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution on Jan. 27, 2024. (Jessi Sachs/ CU Independent)
Pope also expressed her concerns for other marginalized groups, particularly members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Title IX right now has been, in many ways, expanded to go beyond what’s traditionally defined as women and girls to also ensure that our LGBTQ community is also safeguarded,” she said. “I think that may be an area that, with this administration, some of those protections and rights could be potentially rolled back.”
Bruce Parker, the deputy director for Rocky Mountain Equality, a Boulder-based LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, echoed these concerns.
“We’ve had some folks who are parents of younger trans kids or nonbinary kids, and I’ve had to answer questions about if I think they’re going to get their kids taken away from them,” he said. “I have grown trans people over 55 who are scheduled to have surgeries next summer that they’ve saved up for and worked really hard to be able to get who are scared that they’re not going to be able to get it.”
He noted his heavy emotions throughout recent days.
“We’re two days in, and I still tear up when I think about the election,” he said.
Parker, who was raised in a coal mining family in Kentucky, also recalled past elections and the political changes he has seen throughout his lifetime.
“(My grandfather) took me to the voting booth with him when I was six years old and taught me how to vote. He taught me that you vote Democratic because that’s what union households did in ‘86,” he said. “That’s been a value that I’ve had with me for a very long time, but I miss when the Republican candidates that I weren’t voting for were civil, polite people who cared about institutions and who cared about tradition and who cared about morality, even if their definition of morality was different than mine.”
Like Pope and Adams, Parker was largely focused on the impact of the president-elect’s rhetoric. Throughout Trump’s latest campaign, much of this has focused on the transgender community. In Trump’s Agenda 47, which outlines his plans regarding the LGBTQ+ community, the president-elect has said that he will ask Congress to pass a bill saying that “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female – and they are assigned at birth.”
“If the most powerful voice in the country is saying these things, it becomes profoundly dangerous for people to navigate their lives,” Parker said.
He recalled a meeting on Thursday with one of his staff members, who identifies as transgender.
“They asked me if I thought they should be thinking about starting immigration paperwork to Canada because they’re afraid they’ll lose their health care,” he said. “There was a time in my life, (around) 12 years ago, where I would say ‘I think that’s an overreaction’… I don’t know this time if that’s right.”
He worries that this rhetoric alone will be enough to have nationwide effects on vulnerable populations, such as women and the LGBTQ+ community. He said even if the administration doesn’t instate a nationwide ban on abortion or gender-affirming care, he thinks doctors will be afraid to provide such care.
“All of this is about creating a chilling effect on people so they won’t provide services that LGBTQ people need and creating a chilling effect for trans people and the rest of the LGBTQ community, so they won’t feel comfortable living as who they are or being out,” he said. “The goal is to make us invisible and make us not take up space.”
Boulder activists voice concerns for climate protections
During his first term, Trump’s administration rolled back many environmental policies and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, a binding international treaty on climate change.
For Boulder-based organizations focusing on the environment, such as the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and Climatique, Trump’s victory is worrisome for climate causes.
“I would expect a continued erosion of environmental protections and policies that reduce the harms of the fossil fuel industry,” said Giselle Hersfeld, the campaign organizer for the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.
Caleb Batts, a member of Climatique, said he expects the Trump administration to take actions such as implementing new drilling sites.
In Trump’s victory speech on early Wednesday morning, he said he wanted the administration to leave oil policy to him, as the U.S. has “more liquid gold than any other country in the world.”
Batts, speaking at a protest for environmentalism and human rights at CU Boulder’s University Memorial Center on Friday, said that, while he believes that Harris would not have accomplished as much as he hoped for the environment, she would be preferable to Trump.
“We’ve been working with the Democrats for a long time,” he said. “I don’t think (Harris) would have done much, but I think she would have done a lot less harm than Trump.”
Concerns for on-campus protests and the war in the Middle East
For many, the change in presidency and party presents questions about what the relationship between Israel and the United States will look like over the next four years.
Despite pressure from the public, the Biden administration has remained largely in support of Israel, one of the country’s closest allies, during the Israel-Hamas war. According to PBS, the U.S. has sent Israel $17.9 billion in military aid since Hamas attacked Israel last year.
During his first term, Trump’s administration requested $3.3 billion in foreign military financing for Israel for the 2021 fiscal year.
While Trump has expressed his desire to end the war in Gaza, he has also voiced his support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout the war.
A speaker chants with protesters during the rally for Palestine on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (Clementine Miller/CU Independent)
Alex Borenstein, an organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace and a CU Boulder graduate, expressed their frustration with the U.S. stance in the conflict, but said they are unsure what this relationship will look like in the future under Trump.
“Whether Trump is going to give more money at this point remains to be seen,” they said.
Trump’s victory also raises concerns for some campus protestors. Borenstein said they believe college campuses will see increased student political activity in the coming months, as well as a strong response from student organizations on both sides of the political spectrum.
Aya, a crowd action organizer for Boulder Students for Justice in Palestine who asked to be identified using only her first name due to fear of retaliation, expressed her concern that, under Trump, the university could begin cracking down more heavily on protests.
Trump has said in the past that he would work against pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses.
“I can see our counter-protestors be really empowered. I could see them getting violent,” Aya said. “There have already been reports of (nationwide) violence against people, and it’s a really scary time.”
Boulder Republicans express excitement, economic hopes
Though the mood in Boulder, one of Colorado’s most liberal cities, was largely dismal following the election, Boulder County is home to a not-insignificant number of the president-elect’s supporters. In this most recent election, about 20% of Boulder County voters, or nearly 38,000 people, voted for Trump.
Tray Craddock, the chairman of Boulder County Young Republicans, expressed his excitement to see the former president step back into office.
“We believe in freedom, liberty and justice for all, but these ideals were not fully upheld under the Biden-Harris administration,” Craddock said in a statement. “With Donald Trump now elected, I am confident that his focus on putting Americans first will help bridge the divide.”
Marty Kinsley, the president of Boulder Republican Women, said she was excited by Trump’s victory.
“I think we’re going to see an emphasis on what we Republicans have as one of our core values and that is the right of and the ability of the individual,” she said. “We don’t need the state to run our lives. We can run our lives quite well ourselves.”
Kinsley said she thinks a Trump presidency would have a larger effect on Republicans in the predominantly liberal county.
“I don’t see a change for Boulder County, except I do think Republicans are not going to hide in the shadows anymore,” she said.
An audience member wears a “Make America Great Again” hat during the Ann Coulter event. March 21, 2018. (Bri Barnum/CU Independent File)
For many Republican voters throughout Boulder, the win means a future in which their concerns are addressed, including one prominent topic: the economy.
Craddock said economic stability and job security are at the forefront of young Republicans’ concerns.
“While going door-to-door as a volunteer to encourage constituents to vote, I found that many voters in Boulder fear they won’t be able to buy homes after graduation and worry about job availability due to high inflation and resulting job cuts,” he said. “Donald Trump has a plan to address these issues, focusing on a straightforward solution: fixing the economy.”
A divisive first presidential election for many CU students
At CU Boulder, students say they are processing a wave of complex emotions – emotions they identified as fear, surrealism and a strong call to advocate for others.
For Amanda Maxwell, a student at the university, this was a deeply personal and emotional election.
“These are the leaders that show us what’s allowed. They’re the people in power,” Maxwell said. “If you see the highest person in power in this country having been able to … be in power despite these (sexual misconduct) allegations, it’s like, ‘what really are the consequences then?’”
Students also voiced their concerns for marginalized groups under the Trump administration.
“Thinking about the future as a trans person, I want to go into education. I want to be a high school teacher,” said Max Moore, a CU Boulder student. “After the election, I’m starting to consider, ‘Am I gonna be safe if I do that? Is this gonna even be a possibility? If I do end up getting a job, am I gonna be able to do it the way I wanna do it?’”
Jacob Hansen, another student at the university, expressed his worries for his 12-year-old brother, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
“He’s so smart, and I just worry there are so many things being put against him,” Hansen said. “I think he can really do great things in this world. I just fear that he’s not going to be given those opportunities because of who we elected president.”
As students move forward in the wake of the election, many say the results are a reminder that the nation is increasingly divided and complex.
Isaiah Chavous, a CU Boulder graduate who co-founded the university’s Center for African and African American Studies, said this recent election cycle represents an increasingly complicated time for American politics.
“Many may have voted with the economy in mind, and I understand that. But an economic focus alone doesn’t paint nearly a broad enough picture to explain this outcome. This election wasn’t decided simply because every Trump voter is inherently bigoted or solely for economic reasons,” he said in a statement. “We’re seeing identity politics meet a class of Americans who believe that prioritizing profit, even at the expense of people, is a path forward— a mindset I think ultimately misses the bigger picture.”
For many CU Boulder students, this election marked their first experience voting for the highest office in the nation. It also served as a reminder of the country’s deep division.
“Many of us grew up assuming progressive values were becoming the foundation of modern America, only to find that this divide runs much deeper than we imagined,” Chavous said. “This election is a stark reminder, especially for younger voters, of just how complex and divided America’s ideological landscape really is.”
Contact CU Independent Editor-in-Chief Jessi Sachs at jessica.sachs@colorado.edu
Contact CU Independent News Editor Satori Griffith at satori.griffith@colorado.edu
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ainsley Coogan at ainsley.coogan@colorado.edu
CU Independent Managing Editor Celia Frazier contributed to this story.
