In a few short weeks, Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has quickly established new lows in reactionary cruelty and chaos compared to his first. With an entrenched far-right nationalist movement behind him in his MAGA minions, and more support from key figures in the billionaire class including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, Trump has waged war on any and all public services, ramped up the culture war against every marginalized group, escalated the terror of the United States border regime, and pursued a destabilizing “America first” foreign policy.
Trump has also shown a willingness to use strongarm tactics to push his barbarous policies through. His whirlwind of executive actions is upending standard political and legal procedures. He is attempting to impose his will by fiat to bypass even the Republican majorities in Congress. Many of his measures will hurt the interests of some in the capitalist ruling class, so as a result they are being rebuffed by federal courts. For example, he fired people who regulate nuclear weapons and is even laying off Pentagon employees.
At the same time, many of Trump’s actions trample on the rights of the working class and the poor. This is especially the case with the vicious “DOGE” government cuts led by the vile Nazi-saluting parasite Musk: the abrupt and unjust layoffs of federal workers (many of whose heartbreaking stories have gone viral), the gutting of consumer protections, the slashing of social programs, and the suspending of both state and foreign aid.
Add to this Trump’s attacks on the oppressed: the terrifying ICE raids nationwide along with mass deportations of immigrants; the racist cancellation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; and the hateful executive order against the very existence of trans people.
There is a long way to go in building truly effective resistance against Trump. The movement needs to broaden, deepen, and become more disruptive in order to pose a real threat to the reactionary government and its thugs.
These outrages are not going unopposed. Masses of people around the country are beginning to fight back and Trump’s Project 2025 agenda is meeting increasing resistance. These actions have included the “50501” protests (50 protests in 50 states on one day), which mobilized large numbers of people nationwide; the “Day Without an Immigrant” strikes in 60 cities; and the wave of demonstrations for science and research funding and on behalf of federal workers. There have also been coordinated local actions attempting to disrupt and circumvent ICE raids on immigrants. In Chicago this anti-ICE campaign was so successful that Trump’s border czar complained about it on FOX News. “They call it ‘Know Your Rights.’ I call it how to escape from ICE.”
These actions are inspiring in the face of the organized bigotry and engineered social murder of the Trump/Musk regime, and have been especially valuable in quelling the demobilizing fear and despair that many are feeling in this moment.
Still, there is a long way to go in building truly effective resistance against Trump. The movement needs to broaden, deepen, and become more disruptive in order to pose a real threat to the reactionary government and its thugs and to turn back the attacks once and for all. Across many layers of society, everyone who opposes the Trump/Musk program — LGBTQ+ people, immigrant communities, federal workers, the broad left, everyone — must unite against it. Such an allied movement — a united front — is, historically speaking, the most potent social force in combating the ravages of the capitalist class and the reactionary right.
America was never great
However, there are a number of troubling signs about the politics of the opposition to Trump. Many liberals are framing their “resistance” as patriotism — rallying on President’s Day, waving US flags, portraying Trump as a tyrannical king (in reference to the American Revolution), and raising slogans like “Hate Never Made the US Great.” As was the case during Trump’s first term, it’s clear that liberals view him as an aberration among US leaders, rather than a noxious product of the system, and wish to restore the status quo.
This misguided patriotism is a dead end for the movement against Trump. The truth is that Trump and the MAGA movement are as American as the Sand Creek Massacre and the Ku Klux Klan.
This soft nationalism is a dead end for the movement against Trump. The truth is that Trump and the MAGA movement are as American as the Sand Creek Massacre and the Ku Klux Klan. MAGA will always outmaneuver liberals on the issue of nationalism, their home turf, and it is both politically and tactically wrong for the broad left to engage in this way.
Before Trump’s first term, the predecessor to Firebrand’s Denver branch raised the slogan “America Was Never Great.” This is the truest and most powerful argument against MAGA. Validating and tapping into the frustration that people increasingly feel with the bloody imperialist history and systemic injustices of the US — most recently seen in the mass movement against the US-backed genocide in Gaza — is the only sure path forward for the left.
Defending the slaveholders’ Constitution?
As a corollary to their misguided patriotism, many liberals are now calling on the federal courts to “defend democracy” against Trump.
This is a complete contradiction, and exposes more flaws in liberal ideology around Trump. The courts are not a bulwark in defense of democracy, but are themselves explicitly anti-democratic. Federal judges are not elected, but appointed for life, and are not accountable to anyone, except in the rare case of impeachment. The judiciary is supposed to check the power of the (supposedly) most democratic branch of government, the legislature.
In reality, the courts do not uphold abstract democracy, but the Constitution — and the “slaveholders’ Constitution,” as it has traditionally been called by dissidents, is deeply, inherently undemocratic. It enshrines property rights. It sets up the Senate and the Electoral College, giving disproportionate power to a minority elite in smaller and less-populated states. It allows presidential veto of laws passed by Congress and establishes judicial veto power. Its checks and balances and separation of powers — purportedly essential to democracy, as we are taught from childhood — are in fact designed to dampen and derail popular initiatives.
The Constitution and the system it establishes are not intended to establish true democracy, but instead to protect the interests of the ruling class and to ensure that class always gets its way.
Thus, appeals by liberals to defend the Constitution are badly misplaced. The argument that the US runs on “the rule of law, not of men” is an argument against carrying out the popular will.
The US has always been an oligarchy
Underlying the political structure in the US is the most basic lack of democracy in the form of an immense concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority. The capitalist class is able to get Congress to do its bidding through many means, including campaign contributions, bribery, and economic threats. Like every bourgeois state, the US operates according to the Golden Rule: those with the gold make the rules.
It is not at all controversial to state that US is an oligarchy — a 2014 Princeton University study came to that very conclusion. The rich get the policies they want. This means that workers are only able to obtain concessions from the bosses and their state by threatening their interests via disruptive protests and strikes.
The courts are not a bulwark in defense of democracy, but are themselves explicitly anti-democratic.
It is good that more people are beginning to understand the unchecked power of the oligarchs to dictate policy, thanks to Trump’s blatant cronyism and crude lack of decorum. But the solution is not to go back to some mythical benign era before Trump. The US has always been an oligarchy. The richest man in the original 13 colonies, George Washington, became the first US president. The richest capitalists, from the Rockefellers and Carnegies of the 19th century to the current “tech bro” cabal of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, have always dictated the direction of the US government. Trump simply makes it more apparent.
The undemocratic nature of capitalist government
The conflict between Trump and the courts is more complicated than Democratic politicians argue. Yes, Trump and Musk are taking undemocratic action. They are ignoring laws passed by Congress. They are claiming they have a mandate to make these attacks and to cut taxes on the rich, even though Trump won less than half of the popular vote.
However, it is not just Trump who is undemocratic. As discussed, laws passed by Congress are the product of ruling-class control, not true democracy. The judiciary too is undemocratic.
The primary problem with Trump’s program is not that it impinges on Congressional power nor that it undermines the Constitution, but that it savages the rights and interests of the poor and working class, severely undermining the living and working conditions of the vast majority.
Lesser-evilism is fatal during elections, but it is just as fatal at other times. A movement tied to the Democratic Party is tied to the politics of the ruling class.
Of course, the resistance to Trump should oppose Trump’s extra-legal maneuvering, disregard for democratic norms, and disruptive assaults on vital government services. But the rationale should not be restoration of the “proper” constitutional balance between branches. The rationale should be to win what is in the interest of the exploited and oppressed.
Even more importantly, the movement must not rely on the courts or the Democrats, but must oppose the whole governmental apparatus, which has shown itself for centuries to be beholden to the rich. To the extent that the movement puts its hope in alliances with the capitalists’ government and their political parties, it will be too weak to turn back the Trump agenda.
Threats to the ruling class win concessions
The whole history of struggle in the US and around the world shows that people win concessions from the ruling class only when they disrupt its normal operations. Workers win better contracts when they strike or at least threaten to strike. The same principle applies to broader political movements.
If the courts hold back any of Trump’s anti-working class attacks, it will not be due to their adherence to constitutionalism or other abstract ideals. It will be because they fear the threat of a mass movement. As the great abolitionist and former enslaved person Frederick Douglass put it:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters.
The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party will try to funnel the anti-Trump movement into a defense of the Constitution and the election of more Democrats. They want us to forget our declining living standards under Clinton, Obama, and Biden’s neoliberal austerity. They want us to forget Obama’s suppression of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Standing Rock. They want us to forget Biden’s unwavering support for the genocide of Palestinians and his breaking of the railway workers’ strike, both of which were vigorously supported by his party — including by “progressive” Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The whole history of struggle in the US and around the world shows that people win concessions from the ruling class only when they disrupt its normal operations.
They want us to forget that it was the Democrats’ subservience to the interests of capitalists that disillusioned millions and laid the basis for Trump’s victories.
The Democrats’ laughable inability to do even the smallest thing in opposing Trump — a source of puzzlement and outrage among supporters desperate for action — is the result of their fundamental nature as a party of the ruling order, not a party of the people.
Lesser-evilism is fatal during elections, but it is just as fatal at other times. A movement tied to the Democratic Party is tied to the politics of the ruling class. It is less of a threat to the ruling class than an independent movement would be, making it less effective.
Go into the streets. Go on strike. Unite with everyone who defends the interests of the exploited and oppressed, but don’t rely on politicians or the courts. They can’t give us what we need — it must be taken.
