Charting the path forward: Some things that won't work anymore, and a few that might.

Some early notes on political resistance in Trump's second term.

I’ve been intending for weeks to write a “reasons for optimism” post. I keep putting it off, in the hopes that I’ll find a few more.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

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First, on the broader contours of what we are about to face: One area of genuine uncertainty is that there are a few different immediate potential futures for Trump II. We won’t know until at least January just how dark things are about to get.

There is a version of Trump’s second term where he talks a lot about mass deportation, but actually deports comparatively few people. He gestures at massive tariffs, but mostly as a negotiating tactic. The most dangerous parts of Project 2025 languish because they require more attention to detail than he cares to give. (Plus they would be unpopular. And Trump likes to feel popular.) This would be a Trump II that kind of resembles Trump I, when he talked a whole lot about “building the wall,” but lacked the will and skill to actually put the plan into practice.

This is not a good future, mind you. But it’s the best possible of all the bad futures. Its one where we suffer through several years of mid-level corruption and a ceaseless barrage of Trump intrigue and incompetence. It’s a future that still yields a couple hundred more Trump judges with lifetime appointments to the federal bench, ensuring that no future administration can accomplish its goals. It’s also a future that sets us back at least four years on climate commitments, all while handing the plutocrats more money and power that they will ruthlessly work to defend.

It’s, y’know, still really bad.

But the other version of Trump II is the one where he deputizes and mobilizes a deportation force that removes tens of millions of people from their homes. Some will be sent back to their home countries. But most will be rounded up and sent to makeshift camps. And that’s a future where he also uses Schedule F to replace all federal workers with Trump ideologues, reducing the federal government to a cutout front for the Trump organization. It’s one where he shuts down all progressive organizations under the cover of fighting “extremism,” rendering the Democratic Party network incapable of competing in future in elections. One where his political opponents go into hiding, and the military is deployed against protestors, and press critics quickly learn that their constitutional protections are not self-enforcing.

This would be much, much worse.

We cannot know which of these futures we are about to inhabit. Distrust anyone who confidently tells you it will merely be the former. They are in denial. But also avoid overconfidence about the latter. That leads to despair.

“A Hand hovering indecisively over two red buttons.” I prompted Dall-E2 to create this over a year ago. Can’t even remember why. But it seems appropriate to this post. Also, yeah, one of those buttons isn’t red. Eyeroll.

So for the next couple months, we are essentially Schrödinger’s Electorate. There is no uncertainty about Trump’s ambitions. They have been plainly stated. He plans to rule as a dictator on day 1. He does not believe himself to be constrained by the law, checked or balanced by Congress, bound by norms, or answerable to any higher calling than himself. Both the Republican Party, the courts, and the press will be more pliant this time. His generals refused to deploy the military against protestors last time. He will have different generals this time.

But there is real uncertainty about his capacity to execute. Donald Trump is easily flattered, easily distracted. His staff will be selected on the basis of ideological zealotry, not competence. Granted, it is easier to break institutions than it is to build or maintain them. But his biggest impediment last time wasn’t the “deep state”; it was all the ideologically-aligned crooks and scammers stepping on every available rake.

So I cannot quite offer optimism — not quite yet. The case for optimism can’t honestly be made until the wave function collapses and we know which future we inhabit.

Still, in the meantime, I have a few thoughts to share about strategies that will not work this time, along with ones that might:

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I’ve heard a cold-comfort, rally-the-troops message in some progressive circles: “we’ve been here before. We know how to mobilize against him!”

I hate to be a downer, but… no. If your strategic plan for Trump II relies on a repeat of the conditions of Trump I, that is a very bad strategic plan.

When Donald Trump assumed the Presidency in 2017, we had (1) a mainstream media that was eager to play a watchdog role, (2) a Republican Party that had not been entirely cleansed of Trump critics, (3) a judicial branch with zero Trump appointees, and (4) Trump and his team lacking even the vaguest sense of how to run the executive branch.

We had, in other words, a huge attack surface.

Beginning on inauguration day, there were massive, in-person protests. These protests received major media coverage, which was then extended by Trump freaking out and losing even the faintest hint of message discipline. Democrats also supported news outlets and progressive advocacy groups at record levels. There were government whistleblowers and corruption scandals. Advocacy groups had real success challenging him in the courts. Besides tax cuts and judges, Trump couldn’t move much of anything through Congress.

The attack surface is much smaller now.

I do not expect there will be nearly the same surge in small donor support for news organizations or advocacy groups. The 2016 election led to a wave of anger. The 2024 election seems to have skipped that stage of grief, producing mass depression, instead.

There will still be in-person protests. They may indeed become massive. But I’m not sure what happens if Pete Hegseth approves live ammunition, or if Pam Bondi just decides not to press charges when the Proud Boys or the newly-pardoned January 6th squad start bashing resistance-liberal heads.

It’s also going to be harder to tie him up in the courts than it was in the first term. Trump appointed 234 federal judges, including three Supreme Court Justices. These Trump judges have shown no deference to precedent. Many are naked partisans, with no incentive to hide it. (Hell, a Trump judge just struck down Biden’s overtime pay Executive Order yesterday.) The Supreme Court has also gotten very comfortable using its shadow docket to speed up and slow down cases to Trump’s benefit.

Then there’s Elon’s “Department of Government Efficiency” endeavor, which is a wrecking ball aimed at the administrative state. This plan has been telegraphed in advance — it’s a big part of Project 2025. They’re going to make a list of every regulation that plutocrats and major Republican donors do not like. They’re going to repeal them through Executive Order (which is probably illegal, at least until a Trump judge says “nah, that’s fine” and the Supreme Court agrees). Then they’re going to push a major reduction-in-force, eliminating most of the professional class of civil servants who enact and enforce regulatory rules. And then they’re going to reclassify the remaining civil servants as political appointees, replacing them with Trump goons who will investigate the administration’s enemies while ignoring fraud and corruption from the Republican donor class.

That’s, potentially, a death knell for the SEC, the FTC, and the EPA. They could weaponize the FCC and the IRS as well. In the worst-case scenario, this gets extremely dark. In the best-case scenario, it still enables a ton of fraud and corruption, all while further limiting the attack surface.

This isn’t to say that all hope is lost. It isn’t. Really. But it does mean that we should operate from the assumption that all the most effective tactics in 2017-2020 will be blunted this time around. Trump II, even in the least-bad-case-scenario, is much more of a threat than Trump I.

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Here’s a rough outline of what I think might work.

The basic assignment is simple: run out the clock.

There are 102 weeks until the 2026 midterm election. There are 206 weeks until the 2028 Presidential. That’s a lot of time to be playing prevent defense against an opponent who controls all the structural power levers at the federal level. This will hardly be easy.

But Donald Trump is not some strategic genius, enacting a meticulously-crafted long-term plan. He has grown older, but no wiser. He is as likely to focus on deporting 20 million people as he is to get into a weeklong Twitter spat with Mark Cuban. He is a ridiculous person, and tremendously vulnerable to ridicule.

His administration will be staffed by devoted ideologues, not skilled operators. Rudy Giuliani was a devoted Trump supporter. So was John Eastman. Both were comically inept, and are now disbarred as a result. The benchwarmers suiting up now that they are off the playing field have no great excess of skill.

What’s more, he will not be running for another term. (He’ll gesture at it plenty. But the guy is going to be 82 in four years, and he is not aging well.) This could be a source of significant chaos, because he has no clear successor. (Sorry JD Vance. You ain’t it.) Trump’s last administration leaked like a sieve — or, more precisely, like a reality tv show. The leaks and infighting could easily be more intense this time, because all of his lieutenants will be fighting a zero-sum game for power and influence in the coming post-Trump years.

So we organize structural resistance in the few places we have left — the blue states and the big cities.

We fight him through the culture industries, capitalizing on his thin skin and burning clock while he complains about celebrities being mean to him. (Swifties and the other stan armies know how to organize. They don’t particularly want to be political. But the MAGA podcasters need charismatic enemies to yell about. The stan armies might get dragged into it.)

We fight him in the courts, as best we can.

We amplify the infighting and incompetence within his own administration. Stoke the divisions, exacerbate the tensions, and do not obey in advance. Invite the Trump goons to get in each other’s way. Amplify the basic mistakes that leave them placing blame on one another.

Here’s an example: one headline that I keep seeing of late is “Elon Musk: shadow President.” Substantively this annoys me. It’s yet another exercise in Elon mythmaking. But strategically I think it’s great. Enough of those headlines will eventually trigger Trump’s fragile ego. The minute Donald Trump feels overshadowed by Elon is the minute he starts shutting Elon out. And Elon Musk won’t be cool about that. (One thing that Elon Musk has never been is cool.)

This is the sort of regal-court drama that will still get ample media coverage, even from a pliant mainstream media that has submitted to their new role as stenographers for the regime. So long as it is fed by leaks from within an administration that is run like a reality TV show, it’s all fair game to the broadcasters.

In the meantime, focus on protecting the most vulnerable and building resilient networks. The bigger the institution, the bigger the target. We shouldn’t expect civil society or the Democratic Party or legacy media to save us. We’re going to have to save ourselves.

There’s no real hope this time that some scandal will bring Donald Trump down once and for all. (Hell, he isn’t even going to be sentenced for the 34 felonies he was already convicted of.) No one should expect the incoming Congress to impeach and remove him. But the goal is to burn clock. Scandals and infighting limit the real damage, and shorten the timeline it’ll take to repair what we’ve lost.

It’s not much, but it’s the best we can hope for.

I wish I could offer more hope. I’ll keep working on it, and will say more if/when I come up with something. This is all I have for now.