(This is part two of a multi-part series on how to form an effective opposition to the Trump regime. Read part 1.)
Democrats’ theme for President Donald Trump’s first term was “resistance,” which was largely ineffective. Between 2025 and 2028 the theme should instead be “opposition,” as the latter offers us far more productive ways to invest our time and resources. But because time and resources are limited, we have to be smart in how we fight against Trump and the Republican Party this time around. That means picking our battles wisely, and not taking bait that’s dangled in front of our faces.
As a “resistance” effort, Democrats sought to find ways to preemptively drive Trump from the presidency. We put all our eggs in the basket of democratic institutions like the courts and Congress to hold Trump accountable and strip him of power. This manifested in high-profile investigations like Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference and two impeachments.
Of course, despite Trump being the first president in history to be impeached twice—along with being the first ex-president to face criminal charges—he’s right back in the White House despite the resistance’s best efforts. Even Trump being found guilty by a jury of 34 felony crimes and officially sentenced didn’t stop him from assuming a second and final four-year term as the most powerful person on the planet.
The most important thing for people who oppose Trump to do over the next four years is to not fight against everything that comes down the pipeline, but to discern what’s important from what’s just noise, and focus our efforts on where we can truly make a difference in our communities and in people’s lives. The regime is hoping to exhaust us early so they can run up the score further down the road—it’s absolutely imperative that we not let that happen.
What Trump’s plan to “flood the zone” looks like
According to the New York Times, Stephen Miller, who is the 47th president’s top immigration advisor, has explicitly said his goal is to “flood the zone” with a blitz of activity aimed at discouraging and fatiguing the opposition. Miller is correct in assessing the regime’s enemies as “depleted” with limited “bandwidth for outrage and opposition.” If everything is deemed an emergency, then nothing is.
In the first 100 days of the Trump regime, it’s critical for anyone in the opposition when taking in new information to ask ourselves: “Is this worthy of my time?” And when answering that question, we should consider if we have the capacity and the means to oppose it. If there’s a concrete course of action to follow, then follow it. But if there isn’t, then move on.
One good example of something clearly not worth our time is the news that Trump plans to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” Aside from noting that former Mississippi Democratic state representative Steve Holland was the first to do this in 2012 as a means of mocking Republican anti-immigrant legislation, there’s really no need to respond to this.
In some cases, the answer of whether to devote time and attention to something is less clear, like Trump’s plans to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. On one hand, this is a clear attack on the Constitution, and absolutely worthy of our attention. But it’s also dead in the water the moment it gets challenged in the courts—as the American Civil Liberties Union has already promised to do.
NBC Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley wrote last summer that attempts to undermine birthright citizenship are doomed to fail precisely because actually doing so would require another Constitutional amendment. Even U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, who Trump himself appointed to the notoriously far-right 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018, wrote in a 2009 paper that the 14th Amendment applies to the children of undocumented immigrants.
The 14th Amendment of the Constitution is clear that all children born on U.S. soil are citizens, and if any judge were to side with Trump on this, it would not only negate the 14th Amendment, but the Constitution itself. And because judges get their power directly from Article III of the Constitution, any judge that agrees to strike birthright citizenship would effectively be stripping themselves of their own power and legitimacy by chipping away at a fundamental cornerstone of the Constitution. Beyond educating ourselves about the 14th Amendment, there’s really nothing needed from those of us not actively suing the government in federal court.
In another example of shiny objects meant to distract us, Trump announced a cryptocurrency “meme coin” just days before he took the oath of office that quickly accumulated a valuation of roughly $32 billion. The “coin” is a digital currency dubbed $TRUMP that serves as essentially a speculative asset, with 80 percent of the coins in circulation being owned by the Trump Organization.
The $TRUMP meme coin has all the hallmarks of a “rugpull” or “pump-and-dump” operation, in which speculators pump value into a fake asset, only for the majority holders (known as “whales”) to sell off their assets once the value has been inflated far beyond its actual worth. This happened earlier this year, when 22 year-old Haliey Welch—better known as the “Hawk Tuah” girl—launched her own cryptocurrency venture dubbed $HAWK. Welch’s crypto scheme immediately skyrocketed in value to as high as $490 million only for the whales who owned between 80 percent and 90 percent of the supply to sell and leave the rubes holding the bag after its value plummeted to just $26 million.
If any other public official did this, it would rightly be considered a massive scandal requiring public hearings and impeachment proceedings. And as a nation, it’s a jarring contrast given that we just witnessed the burial of former President Jimmy Carter, who famously had to put his peanut farm in a blind trust upon taking the oath of office in order to stay above board (his business was deeply in debt by the time he left the White House). But because the 78 year-old Trump is in his second and final term (his bluster about potentially seeking a third term is another shiny object, as the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution is unequivocal about limiting presidents to two terms), and because he’s wormed his way out of three of four criminal cases, it would sadly be a waste of time and resources to focus on holding Trump accountable for this crypto scam.
Saving our energy for when Trump overplays his hand
When there are opportunities for the public at large to take action to stop the Trump regime, we should recognize those moments and not hesitate to be an effective oppositional force. One good example of this is in Chicago, Illinois, where Trump border czar Tom Homan has said he plans to carry out his first arrests of undocumented immigrants. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has shared a detailed list of rights all Illinois residents have regardless of their immigration status, in both English and Spanish.
That list—compiled by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights—includes hotlines for people to call when they believe they or their neighbors are in imminent danger of being arrested and deported. It encourages residents to not open their doors (and to teach their children the importance of not opening doors), and that warrants are only valid if signed by a judge. As attorney Sheryl Weikal wrote on Bluesky, the “administrative warrants” carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not legally binding if not signed by a judge. Sharing this information with friends and neighbors you believe could be targeted by ICE is a great example of how you can make a difference in people’s lives with your actions as an agent of the opposition.
The opposition should also be on guard for attempts to use the law to illegally target marginalized populations for state-sanctioned oppression. The far-right Project 2025 playbook has already laid out its plans to target the LGBTQ+ population in its foreword by conflating their very existence as “pornography” to be outlawed on page 5 of the document:
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Any effort by the regime to designate an entire population of people as second-class citizens to be harassed by the state and its supporters should be fiercely opposed at every turn. If the Trump administration attempts to conflate “transgender ideology” with “pornography” and “sexualization of children,” and thereby criminalize the existence of marginalized people, that should necessitate a massive mobilization in the streets to demonstrate solidarity for those people.
It should be known that failing to stand up on behalf of the trans population—or any group of Americans subjected to state-sanctioned persecution—will be interpreted as a green light for the regime to eventually do the same to other groups. Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” poem explicitly warns that it is the duty of those in countries ruled by tyrants to exercise solidarity, not only because it’s the morally right thing to do, but out of self-preservation: “Then they came for me / and there was no one left / to speak for me.”
It’s inevitable that Trump will overplay his hand. And when he does, the opposition should be ready to pounce. One-off media trolling stunts like renaming the Gulf of Mexico aren’t worth our time: Opponents of Trump should instead save energy for marshaling opposition to his tariffs, his mass deportations, and for actual legislation Trump aims to pass through Congress, like extending his tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations for the next decade.
As I’ve written previously for Occupy.com, the proposed tax cut extension would cost more than $5 trillion according to the U.S. Treasury, and Republicans have already proposed a list of cuts to offset the legislation’s staggering sum. This includes rolling back the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Affordable Care Act. The first three directly affect the job security of the working class, while the latter makes it possible for millions of people to actually afford health insurance. And all of this is potentially on the chopping block so absurdly wealthy men with more money than they’ll be able to spend in 100 lifetimes can add a few more bundles of cash to the mountain of it they’re already sitting on.
The new regime will also overplay their hand if they actually follow through on their plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Multiple industries that are essential to the U.S. economy, like agriculture, construction, healthcare, and hospitality, all depend on immigrant labor. If these industries are suddenly starved of their workforces, this will result both in drastic increases in the cost of basic necessities like groceries and housing, as well as a sharp uptick in the unemployment rate.
And as journalist David Cay Johnston observed after the November election, Trump’s mass deportations will cause a tremendous legal and financial headache for local governments as the children of deported immigrants (who are legal U.S. citizens) will be left behind, and put into foster care. This means the property tax rates of residents in counties with an influx of new children in the foster care system will go up. And that could be just the beginning of the chaos brought about by mass deportations.
“When children grow up in circumstances like that, the likelihood we will have mental health and criminal problems in the future go up,” Johnston told MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid. “So the costs of this are way beyond the estimates that focus on just deporting people, and of course, Donald Trump said it will be bloody. And I don’t see how it can be anything but that.”
Trump’s key campaign promise of imposing sweeping new double-digit tariffs on goods imported from Canada, China, and Mexico would be perhaps the most significant way the new administration will overplay its hand. As president, Trump doesn’t need Congress to impose new tariffs, and he did so by decree without incident during his first term. But if these new tariffs are forced on foreign imports, it could mean Americans have noticeably far less purchasing power than during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
One key example is gas prices: Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a January panel discussion that because the US imports several million barrels of oil per day from its northern neighbor, the new 10 percent tariff will likely result in higher gas prices. For some drivers in the Midwest, they could expect to pay as much as 75 cents per gallon more under the new tariff. The US also imports more than $23 billion worth of grocery staples from Mexico including dairy products, confectionery items, cereal, flour, starch, meat, and produce. Simply put, Trump’s tariffs will be a huge hit to Americans’ bank accounts. This is absolutely something the opposition should focus on.
The anti-Trump opposition needs to remember that the target of our rage needs to be the Republican Congress, rather than the term-limited executive. The 2026 midterms are closer than the 2028 presidential election, and Republicans’ majorities in the House and Senate are incredibly fragile. Ideally, an effective opposition will be disciplined and focus on areas where Republican members of Congress from swing districts and Republican senators from purple states will be extra-sensitive to public pressure.
It will be a long and bumpy four years, but as Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas wrote in December, dictatorships take much longer than that to centralize power. By picking and choosing where and how we apply pressure, we can prevent the worst from happening, and maximize our impact to weaken Trump’s hold on Congress in the next midterm cycle.
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