Mass protests have demonstrated a wide range of disagreement with the Trump agenda. But we need smaller local and regional networks to build a more rooted, sustained opposition.

Americans roundly oppose Donald Trump’s authoritarian regime and the miserable state of the country. While the president claims that he has a mandate on “mass deportations,” 62 percent of the public opposes his draconian immigration policies. Outraged people in liberal and conservative towns and cities nationwide have come together to defend their neighbors from the terror of abductions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of adults blame Trump for the rising costs of groceries — a signature campaign issue of his — and half say his policies are making them worse off financially.

But given the scale of the onslaught, there is a sense that people aren’t resisting enough. The New York Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg described the apparent conundrum: “There’s less hope and more resignation” now compared to Trump’s first term. “In the last election Trump won the popular vote, and most demographics shifted rightward. The resistance has seemed exhausted and demoralized, and leaders in business, law and academia have adjusted accordingly,” she wrote.

Mass protests have demonstrated disagreement with the Trump agenda. But protests have generally been fragmented and localized, proving to be little more than speed bumps for Trump’s reckless agenda. What we need is to build a more sustained resistance, one that can pose a real threat to the Trump regime, are more rooted, sustained local and regional networks.

Protest is the continuity from the first Trump presidency to the second. From the iconic Women’s March after Inauguration Day in 2017 to the historic uprisings in the summer of 2020, no other president in modern U.S. history has endured thousands of protests and demonstrations against almost every facet of his administration. During Trump’s first term, the Crowd Counting Consortium tracked upwards of 60,000 protests involving at least 21 million people, describing the outpouring as probably “the biggest sustained protest movement in U.S. history.” The mass movement of 2020 was instrumental in pushing Trump out of office and ushering in the Joe Biden presidency. But even as Biden began to betray his campaign promises, his administration met little resistance. That’s until the Palestine solidarity encampments broke through in the spring of 2024.

In the early days of Trump’s second term, scrappy federal workers organized to protest his plan for mass layoffs. Local activists targeted Tesla dealerships across the country with pickets and protests to oppose Elon Musk’s role in dismantling federal agencies and firing federal workers. The protests were likely instrumental in helping to tank Tesla’s stock and push Musk out of the Trump administration in late May. Yet his nefarious influence in disrupting the operations of the federal government has persisted.

By the spring, the demonstrations had grown to sizes similar to those that had dogged the first Trump administration. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered at Hands Off demonstrations in April to stop what the organizers called “the most brazen power grab in modern history.” At Trump’s behest, the typically anodyne Flag Day, June 14, was transformed into a bellicose parade celebrating Trump’s birthday, and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. The No Kings protests held the same day were the largest anti-Trump demonstrations yet. Organizers claimed that more than five million people participated in some 2,000 locations nationwide — the largest single-day protest since the first Trump term, and proof that Trump doesn’t have a mandate.

But the protests are not large or politically cohesive enough to pose an actual threat to the regime. His opposition has yet to cohere into a formation with a clear political agenda. Part of the reason is that the politics of these demonstrations and the liberal opposition more broadly are muted, if not murky. The No Kings demonstrations were organized to reject “authoritarianism, billionaire-first politics and the militarization of our democracy,” according to the organizers, without offering a vision for how to move forward. What should we do other than protest? What are the constructive demands that could attract a broad base of people? The vague demands of liberals may lead ordinary people to assume their goal is to get society back to how things were before Trump returned to power. Organizers aren’t offering enough political clarity.

Even worse, if protest organizers and liberals make calls to return Democrats to power in the upcoming national elections without insisting on major political changes, people may become even more checked out. Americans are disappointed with Democrats’ weak resistance to the GOP. Any opposition that offers simplistic defenses of our democracy or that aspires to return Democrats to office and get back to normal may deepen the right wing’s hold on power.

People’s disillusionment with the representative institutions of our democracy — the Supreme Court, Congress, our two major political parties, our corrupt political system and even the media — should inspire calls for radical changes to our so-called democracy.

The American public views their governing and civic institutions as caught between corrupt and ineffective. In the spring of 2024, less than a quarter of Americans polled expressed trust in “the federal government to do the right thing.” That was during the Biden administration. Eighty-five percent of people said they “don’t think elected officials care what people like them think.” Such skepticism also extends to political parties. A record 28 percent expressed sour views of both major parties — an increase from 7 percent 20 years earlier. Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court slid a whopping 27 percentage points from 2019 to 2025. Three-quarters of Americans believe that democracy is under threat, but much of that sentiment seems driven by how people experience an impoverished democracy in their day-to-day lives.

This contempt extends to the media, too. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mainstream media. Take The New York Times, widely perceived as the standard bearer of liberalism and among the loudest institutions to proclaim the need for a robust defense of democracy. But the paper undermined its ostensibly lofty position with its recent intervention in the New York Democratic mayoral primary race. The Times editorial board, almost a year after announcing it would no longer endorse candidates in local elections, urged voters not to rank Zohran Mamdani, a state legislator who is an avowed democratic socialist, in the ranked-choice voting system. The editorial landed days before the primary, when polls indicated that Mamdani was second only to former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

The editorial board conceded that Mamdani “offers the kind of fresh political style for which many people are hungry during the angry era of President Trump.” Yet it justified its position by deriding Mamdani as an “elite progressive” with an “agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.” Even more baffling, it concluded that Cuomo “would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani,” even though in 2021 The Times had cited “74,000 pieces of evidence” of long-standing patterns of “unwelcome and nonconsensual touching,” “offensive comments,” and other misconduct in calling for his resignation as governor.

Of course, editorials by The New York Times editorial board are not widely read. But this refusal even to consider Mamdani a plausible candidate fuels the idea that large, powerful civic and political institutions don’t care what people think. Institutions like The New York Times want people to stop Trump but only on their own terms, and in ways that preserve the failing status quo. American passivity is fueled by the idea that it doesn’t matter what the public thinks because those with power do what they want anyway.

In contrast, the Mamdani campaign demonstrates what a combative response to Trumpism could look like. With more than 50,000 volunteers, the campaign acted like a social movement, one that had to overcome bipartisan attacks and the vitriolic racism of the right. More important, the politics of the campaign took a forward-looking, constructive approach. For months, Mamdani focused on a redistributive agenda that called for taxing the wealthy to generate resources that would make the city more tolerable for working-class New Yorkers: universal child care, fast and free public buses, a $30 minimum wage, rent freezes. He put affordability at the heart of a campaign to defend democracy. And beyond that, he stood for the rights of Palestinians. That’s attractive to people. He offered a proactive agenda both in local and national politics.

And voters responded. He garnered more votes than any candidate in New York mayoral primary history. In his victory speech, he said, “Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations not because the people dislike democracy but because they have grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and weakness.” He added, “In desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. New York, if we have made one thing clear over these past months, it is that we need not choose between the two.”

In response, a rogues’ gallery of Democratic Party operatives and donors are furiously cobbling together an opposition to Mamdani, the will of the voters be damned — further evidence of the party’s situational defense of democracy. More and more people believe that the political and governing institutions of our democracy, including elected officials, are unresponsive to them. Why would we expect the public to defend those institutions?

This view of democracy among liberals and Democrats — we’ll defend it when we like the candidate, policy, or court decision — is not much different from Trump’s democracy. His administration will go along with policies and court decisions it likes and ignore those it doesn’t. Recently, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois told Democrats, “It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” imploring, “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now.” He added, “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have.” Many other Democrats share his desire to fight Trump on their terms, but not in ways that challenge the parts of the status quo they continue to defend. That includes the disgraceful role of the U.S. in financing Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

When student activists flooded the streets to show support for Palestine in the spring of 2024, Democrats denounced them as antisemitic, and then-President Biden maligned their largely peaceful protests as violent and disorderly. The Democratic Party wants protests of the Republican Party’s political agenda (unless those protests are led by a progressive Democrat). But if you call Israel’s war on Palestinians genocide or criticize arms shipments to Israel, the Democratic National Committee will label you antisemitic and may mobilize the police to destroy your protest. Even internally, the Democratic Party is hostile to democratic expression it does not control. The gun control activist David Hogg was hectored out of an elected leadership position in the Democratic National Convention. His transgression? Suggesting that Democrats who were out of step with the politics of the base should face primary challenges. Political protests are not like water faucets that Democrats can turn on and off depending on whether they approve.

Trump’s attacks prove once again that political movements are not guaranteed. They need more to grow than worsening conditions. We’re still in the early days of this miserable presidency, and no one knows what might lead to the kind of political outpouring that could curtail or even stop Trump’s reactionary agenda. An incalculable mix of confidence and consciousness combine in unpredictable ways to give millions of people the belief that they can stop a government on a rampage. In an April poll, 59 percent of Americans described the beginning of Trump’s second presidency as “scary.”

Eventually, people’s anger and disgust will overwhelm their feelings of fear and intimidation, especially as the terrifying c onsequences of Trump’s big, ugly bill set in. Add to that the ongoing horror of the ICE raids and the heartless policies that leave victims of climate catastrophes in Texas, New Mexico, and elsewhere on their own. Systematic efforts to roll back the civil rights infrastructure that took 100 years to build will also motivate those appalled by racism to act.

For many, that moment arrived when a proliferation of local networks formed to challenge the draconian immigration raids in Los Angeles, where ICE’s attacks have been particularly concentrated. Thousands of Angelenos fanned out across the city to defend immigrants, protest, hold and attend know-your-rights trainings, and provide grassroots aid to families once again pushed into the shadows. On July 10, 1,400 people showed up for a training in nonviolent civil disobedience in Los Angeles.

Beyond L.A., ICE raids have forced other communities to develop their own networks, as in Milford, Mass., where ICE captured and detained Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 18-year-old student. Gomes da Silva, who arrived in the U.S. from Brazil when he was 7, was taken by ICE while on his way to volleyball practice. Hundreds of his classmates and teachers, along with other community members, swung into action, putting ICE on the defensive. Right after the high school’s graduation ceremony, the students, still in their gowns, marched into town, demanding his release. They were joined by around 200 teachers. He was released six days later.

According to one report, Milford was the first New England town to join an ICE program to crack down on hiring undocumented immigrant workers. In last fall’s election, 42 percent of Milford voters chose Trump. Since securing Gomes da Silva’s release, the community has continued to organize as it builds a lasting network to resist ICE’s fascist tactics.

At the heart of such efforts is a politics of togetherness and solidarity, an us-against-them orientation. This reflects the growing class polarization in the country, evinced by a government led by billionaires and elites who loot public coffers to engorge their bank accounts even further. These kinds of local ties and networking are important, especially when the befuddled Democratic Party remains politically paralyzed. They have offered no hint of leadership on any relevant issue, especially immigration, leaving every city to chart its own course. The development of a coherent opposition is coming together through local responses to a wide range of political and economic attacks instead. It’s not just the size of the protest and demonstrations in defense of an abstract idea of democracy that matter. The day-to-day reality of how people defend against the cruel attacks on workers will define the opposition required to survive this era.