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boycott
Boycott T-Mobile—and All Trump Collaborators
Let's make it clear not just to T-Mobile but all of corporate America: There are costs to siding with this authoritarian government.
Oct 03, 2025
Ever since the Irish Land League organized community members in County Mayo to band together and refuse to serve, work for, trade with, or even deliver mail to the English land agent, Captain Charles Boycott, the boycott has become a staple in activists’ toolkit. And nearly 160 years since Captain Boycott was effectively ostracized—as US President Donald Trump and his cronies assail American democracy and send troops into our cities and masked goons onto our streets—it's a tool that’s gaining a renewed prominence once again.
After Target dropped its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) targets in February, Black faith leaders, including Pastor Jamal Bryant, called for a boycott of the company. “What we learned from the Montgomery bus boycott is that racist America doesn’t respond to speeches, it responds to dollars,” Pastor Bryant told his parishioners at his 10,000-member megachurch in Atlanta.
In the months that followed, Target’s sales, foot traffic, and stock price tanked. By August, Forbes was announcing that the boycott had cost the Target CEO his job and the company’s investors $12 billion.
After Elon Musk started his attempts to destroy the US government earlier this year, including bragging about putting USAID into the woodchipper, an act that may have killed half-a-million people so far, thousands committed to boycotting Tesla as part of the #TeslaTakedown movement.
If a company like T-Mobile believes that there are no economic consequences to siding with authoritarianism, they are much more likely to do it.
In the midst of the boycott, Tesla sales collapsed, the stock price cratered, and before long Musk was out of the government and engaging in a very public bitching session about President Trump.More recently, after Disney suspended Jimmy Kimmel for comments following the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, a boycott of Disney grew so rapidly, with tens of thousands of cancellations of Disney, Hulu, and ESPN, that it forced the company into reinstating the comedian.
Attempting to build on this, the labor union, the Communication Workers of America, the Tesla Takedown campaign, and the climate coalition I held lead, Stop the Money Pipeline, have launched the T-Mobile Boycott.
In the fight to save democracy, T-Mobile has chosen the wrong side: It’s hosting Trump Mobile on its network, despite the conflicts of interest being so great they may amount to corruption. T-Mobile is also partnering with Elon Musk’s Starlink, pouring billions into the far-right extremist’s pockets, and it lobbied in favor of Trump’s deadly budget bill, which will strip healthcare from millions of Americans. T-Mobile has also engaged in years of union busting so vicious it recently became the first telecommunications company to be added to the AFL-CIO’s boycott list.
We’ve set a goal of 10,000 T-Mobile customers canceling their contracts between November 14-16. In the process, we hope to build on the energy of the Target, Tesla, and Disney boycotts and make it clear not just to T-Mobile but all of corporate America: There are costs to siding with this authoritarian government.
If you’re a T-Mobile customer, you can take the pledge to hang up on T-Mobile here.
Even if you’re not a customer, we encourage you to take the pledge to boycott T-Mobile. The boycott is happening right before the holiday season, when a lot of people switch carriers—tens of thousands of people pledging to never switch to T-Mobile at this time of year is an important part of the campaign.
But I also want to be honest with you, I don’t know if this campaign will work. While we’re urging people to cancel en masse next month, I recently completed a test run and canceled my contract with T-Mobile and switched to Visible (saving more than $60 on my monthly cell phone bill in the process).
As economically advantageous as it was however, it took me about 45 minutes to switch from T-Mobile, including a call to the company to get a “port out pin.” In the grand scheme of things, 45 minutes isn’t an eternity, but it’s also not nothing. It took me less than four minutes to cancel my Disney+ subscription after Kimmel’s suspension.
I have no idea if we can get 10,000 people to do something that might take them nearly 45 minutes, even if we can convince them it is a small but important act in the fight to save democracy.
But I do know this, in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century, Timothy Snyder’s first lesson was, “Do not obey in advance.” And not only is T-Mobile obeying in advance, it's actively courting the administration, even as the horrors pile up: the attacks on free speech, the naked threats against political opponents, the vanishing of countless human beings into a gulag in El Salvador.
So, in this time of grave peril for this country and the world, let us use our money to build the world we want to see.
From Target to Tesla to T-Mobile, let us boycott the collaborators.
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Using Boycotts to Defend Free Speech: This Is Larger Than Jimmy Kimmel
Kimmel isn’t the only voice that’s been targeted for failing to toe the line in the wake of Kirk’s murder, but Kimmel’s firing is the one that’s outraged millions of Americans who aren’t political junkies, so it's the one that offers the best chance to act.
Sep 22, 2025
How can we effectively push back on the Jimmy Kimmel suspension, and its larger threats to free speech? After Charlie Kirk’s shooting, Kimmel posted, “Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human?” And sent his family’s “love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents, and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.” But that didn’t seem to matter, because Kimmel also dared to point out that the Trump administration was using the assassination to score political points.
US President Donald Trump had already warned in July that Kimmel should be the next to be fired after Stephen Colbert. After Kimmel spoke out following the assassination, Trump Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr threatened to revoke the licenses of stations carrying Kimmel’s show. Nexstar and Sinclair then jumped in saying they wouldn’t air Kimmel’s episodes. And ABC-Disney caved. Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs would be proud.
Hearteningly, Americans are responding with appropriate outrage. The cancellation site of Disney+ streaming service has reportedly crashed from people ending their subscriptions. Conservative-leaning comedians have spoken out. Common Cause has launched a Turn Off Disney campaign and FreePress.Net has started a call-in campaign. Even Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”
The question is how to sustain the pushback, which means building the broadest possible coalition of fellow citizens who are outraged, whether or not they love Kimmel’s jokes and stands. And how to coordinate as many organizations as possible working together to promote approaches like:
- Boycotting ABC-Disney, including theme parks, cruises, movies, and streaming and TV channels like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu. Asking international groups to do the same.
- Boycotting local stations of ABC, NextStar, and Sinclair. This could be particularly valuable given Sinclair’s longtime role demanding that their stations air their right-wing segments and talking points (plus demanding Kimmel donate to Turning Point or Kirk’s family). And Sinclair just backed off under pressure from their earlier announcement to schedule a Charlie Kirk Tribute in Kimmel’s slot. Public protests at the affiliates give people ways to act within their own communities, pressuring them to agree to carry Kimmel again and ask Sinclair to do so nationally. They can also spark general local coverage, along the lines of the Tesla Takedown campaigns.
- Targeting and pressuring station advertisers, both national and local. Local groups can publicly announce targets. People can find the advertisers by watching the local broadcasts. There’s also a crowdsourced map where people can take pictures of TV ads and then upload them with links to which advertiser and which station.
- Promoting all these actions on social media and in every other way. Hashtags circulating include #BoycottDisney, #CancelDisneyABC, #CancelDisneyPlus, #CancelHulu, #BoycottSinclair, and #IstandWithJimmyKimmel. Also here’s a link to related cartoons.
Successful boycotts and corporate campaigns need coalitions that act together and persist. I’m hoping other groups will now coordinate with Freepress.net and Common Cause to do this, and coordinate on common platforms to direct people. For instance, someone launched a boycottdisneyabc.com site with toolkits, templates, and an event page. But it’s not clear which, if any, groups are behind it or are using it. Pushback takes organization, as well as individual people acting.
Kimmel isn’t the only voice that’s been targeted for failing to toe the line in the wake of Kirk’s murder. MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd and the Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah. But Kimmel’s firing is the one that’s outraged millions of Americans who aren’t political junkies, so it's the one that offers the best chance to act. Kimmel’s suspension presents both a challenge to democracy, and an opportunity to keep this country one where governments can’t just shut down people who disagree with them.
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Trump Admin to Withhold Disaster Aid from Any State or City That Boycotts Israeli Products
One international relations expert called it "the diametric opposite of America First."
Aug 04, 2025
The Trump administration announced Monday that it will cut off federal natural disaster preparation funding to any state or city that boycotts Israeli products.
According to Reuters, which quoted a statement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA):
States must certify that they will not cut off "commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies" to receive the money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency according to the agency's terms for grantees.
The condition applies to at least $1.9 billion that states rely on to cover search and rescue equipment, emergency manager salaries, and backup power systems, among other expenses.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is an international attempt to use economic means—including refusing to support Israeli companies—to put pressure on the nation's government to stop human rights abuses toward Palestinians.
BDS has gained momentum in the wake of Israel's current genocidal onslaught against Gaza, which began in 2023. However, it long predates the most recent assault as a method of nonviolent resistance to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, which is recognized as illegal under international law.
It is not immediately clear which states would lose disaster funding under the new policy, since none actively boycott Israel. In fact, since 2015, 34 U.S. states have passed anti-BDS laws that take multiple different forms.
Many of these states require public employees and contractors to sign pledges that they will not boycott Israeli products during the term of their contract. Others steer state investments away from funds that do not invest in Israeli companies, stocks, or government bonds.
These laws have been frequently challenged in courts as violations of the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, assembly, association, and petition. Though some have been struck down in federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court has continuously declined to rule on their legality.
Though no states actively boycott Israel, some U.S. city councils, including in Portland, Maine; Hamtramck, Michigan; and two California cities, Hayward and Richmond, have passed resolutions divesting from Israeli companies considered "complicit" in the country's attacks on Palestinian rights.
According to FEMA's new policy, these cities and others that may consider adopting similar policies may now lose out on federal funds to prepare for natural disasters.
Critics have noted the irony of the "America First" Trump administration jeopardizing the safety of American citizens on behalf of a foreign country.
Stephen Wertheim, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment, described it as "the diametric opposite of America first."
Krystal Ball of the political talk show Breaking Points said, "denying American victims of natural disasters aid if they are insufficiently supportive of Israel" was "absolute insanity."
Gillian Branstetter, a communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—a leading opponent of anti-BDS laws—joked that the government's policy was now: "If you don't buy Sabra hummus, we will drown your family."
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