06 Oct 2026 36 min read IMR

Welcome to 'The Golden Age': War, Decay, and Resistance in Trump's America

War, decay, and resistance in Trump’s second term.

By Joe Allen

Right now, the United States has initiated a new phase of its unprovoked and illegal war with Iran. Ranting and raving about Iran being led by ‘scumbags’ is another example, if you needed one of the erratic and unstable mind of President Donald J. Trump. Trump also declared the ‘ceasefire’ over, if there ever was one to begin with. Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. military bases and closing the Strait of Hormuz.¹ For the foreseeable future, there will be a permanent armed conflict of greater or lesser intensity in the Persian Gulf region. Meanwhile, Israel continues to wage war in Lebanon with Washington and Tel Aviv at each other’s throats, an unprecedented situation in the long relationship between the U.S. and Israel.² The first phase of the Iran War was widely seen as a humiliating defeat for President Trump and the United States across the political spectrum.³^,⁴ Despite Trump’s panicked efforts to justify the terms of the now-dead Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to avoid a global depression - due to the burgeoning economic costs of the blockade of oil through the Strait of Hormuz - it is clear that the war was settled on Iran’s terms.⁵

Among the key points of the MoU are a massive $300 billion reconstruction program for Iran, an end to the regional war on all fronts (including Lebanon), an end to the mutual blockade of the Strait, and lifting economic sanctions on Iran.⁶ The U.S and Israel launched a war to effect regime change in Tehran and to destroy the country’s military capabilities, but instead they have strengthened their regional rival. All of the terms outlined in the MoU are amazing in-and-of themselves, yet the one that stands out, is the status of U.S. military forces in point 4: “The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final Deal.” This strongly hints that the U.S. was willing to negotiate the closing of its string of military bases and radar installations that surround Iran, many of which were rendered inoperable by Iranian missile and drone strikes, and even possibly, its Naval task forces from the Gulf.⁷ Now all that also appears off the table. Not since the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War in January 1973 was the United States prepared to accept terms so humiliating.⁸

The consolation prize for the U.S. is that Iran can maintain its current (civilian) nuclear program, while agreeing not to develop a nuclear weapon, which it previously agreed to during the Obama presidency.⁹ It’s hard to see how a future agreement between the U.S. and Iran won’t roughly come to the same conclusion. Iran clearly has the upper hand. This set off an initial round of panic in Washington. U.S. Senator, Chris Murphy (D.-Conn.), took to the floor of the U.S. Senate, and told those assembled and the wider viewing public, that the Iran war was “the biggest foreign policy blunder in 20 years.”¹⁰ He revealed that he,

knew the deal was going to be bad. I knew the deal was likely to be humiliating for the United States of America, but I didn’t think it was going to be this humiliating. The war needs to end basically upon any terms, but it is important for us tonight, as we are reading the details of this agreement to understand how to never make this mistake again.

The tepid opposition in Congress to Trump’s war was reflected by the narrow passage in the House and Senate of the “War Powers Act” in June.¹¹ Trump typically dismissed the vote and called it ‘meaningless’. He then growled on social media, “These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!” While major news outlets, including the BBC, were quick to highlight, “The vote marks the first time that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution instructing a president to end a military action since the War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted.” There have been many U.S. wars since 1973. Despite claims that Trump represents a fundamentally different type of presidential leader, he shares much with past presidents on foreign policy. We’ve had an imperial presidency for a long time.¹²

Any Democratic and the small number of Republicans opposed to the renewed attacks will be faced with the question: What’s their alternative? The war has been unpopular with the American public since it began.¹³ The quick U.S. military operation that kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolaus Maduro and his wife—the 21st Century version of ‘A splendid little war’—deluded the Trump White House into thinking that their enemies were empty storefronts.¹⁴ A lot is at stake here for the U.S. When the United States was defeated in the Vietnam War, it opened up a space for a few years that allowed national liberation struggles against U.S. backed tyrants, notably in Nicaragua and Iran, both in 1979. Today, the primary concern of the United States is the expanding global presence of its peer economic power, China.¹⁵ Over the next few weeks, we will see if the renewed fighting will deepen the small cracks in the leadership of the Republican Party or will Trump simply backtrack on everything?

Trump’s military disaster in Iran has certainly revealed a weakened power. One that is still highly destructive, yet unable to achieve its primary political goal in the Persian Gulf. The simple truth of the matter is that anything can happen, and everything is possible. We are clearly at a major turning point, with U.S. military prowess and political influence questioned in the Greater Middle East and other parts of the globe, while still projecting itself as the dominant global power.¹⁶ The panic over the Iran deal in Washington, has once again revealed deep anxiety in the U.S. political class about Trump’s erratic behavior.¹⁷ Instead of Trump’s stated goal of restoring America’s preeminent position in the world, he has accelerated its decline.

While Trump was desperately trying to extricate himself from Iran during the phase of the war, where he delivered defeat in record time, he has also mused about other future conflicts. Though Trump promised the end of foreign wars during his 2016 and 2024 campaigns, lately, and typical of him, he said he never made that promise.¹⁸ He’s also raised the specter of more costly, burdensome wars. The U.S. military budget is nearly a trillion dollars. Trump wants to spike it up to $1.5 trillion to be paid for by looting the federal healthcare budgets.¹⁹ Recently he stated, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” (said).²⁰ “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal level. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.” And then added, “We’re fighting wars.”

The United States has lost four wars in the 21st Century, so far: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Iran, an unprecedented string of military defeats. The renewed fighting deepens the quagmire that the administration finds itself in with no end in sight and at ballooning cost. The question of Guns or Butter that has been perennially debated since the Vietnam War, has always been resolved in favor of guns, yet how much more can working class and lower middle class people take?²¹ Something has to give.

The ‘Golden Age’

Trump is big on campaign promises that have gotten more fanciful with each election. His whole business and political life is modeled on a carnival barker. His ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) campaign slogan is a slightly reworked one from Ronald Reagan.²² Trump declared in his second inaugural speech after being sworn into office, “the golden age of America begins right now.²³ From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation.” He was building upon themes that carried him to the White House in 2016, but whose first term crashed on the rocks of his incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic crisis, and the Black Lives Matter uprising following the police murder of George Floyd.²⁴

Trump’s comeback campaign of 2024, rested upon the failed promises of the Biden Administration to alleviate the declining living conditions of broad swaths of the working and middle class, exacerbated by the worst inflation in decades.²⁵ Trump made even bigger promises this time around, to be delivered more quickly. Standing before Congress in February to deliver the annual Presidential ‘State of the Union’ speech,²⁶ he declared that we had arrived:

Less than five months from now, our country will celebrate an epic milestone in American history, the 250th anniversary of our glorious American independence. This July 4th, we will mark two and a half centuries of liberty and triumph, progress and freedom in the most incredible and exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of the earth. And we’ve seen nothing yet. We’re going to do better and better and better. This is the golden age of America.

Except for the most cult-like of his followers, few believe it. Trump’s polling is in the toilet, exacerbated by a failed, unpopular, and costly war with Iran; but it began to decline before the war started in February 2026.²⁷^,²⁸^,²⁹

Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ has drawn comparisons to the “Gilded Age” of the late 19th Century.³⁰ The Gilded Age was a mocking description of the era popularised by American author and satirist Mark Twain.³¹ It was an era of obscene wealth, grinding poverty, and political corruption. Most Americans know it today as the era of the Robber Barons, the wealthy titans of industry whose unscrupulous methods, included outright thievery, and strike breaking by private armies. The most notorious of the Robber Barons was John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company monopoly, whose immense wealth made him the villain of the era.³² The great fountain of corruption emanating from the Trump family inner circle and his close allies approaches, if not exceeds the Gilded Age. According to the House Democrats oversight committee:³³

While Americans struggle to buy groceries and pay rent, Donald Trump is making his family richer through digital grift schemes— collecting profits through digital wallets and granting pardons to the highest bidders. While Trump and his family are using the White House to make billions, we are tracking every cent. As of January 2026, our Committee’s analysis shows that these schemes have contributed to an estimated $2.25 billion in realized profits for Trump from foreign payments, corrupt oligarchs, and others. This total rises to as much as $9.7 billion when the value of Trump’s digital assets is factored in, with as much as $600 million coming from foreign interests. President Trump should be serving the American people—not his own pockets.

In one of many shameless examples of the Trump family stuffing their pockets, according to the ProPublica investigative journalism foundation:³⁴

When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.³⁵ But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.

In this world of Trumpian corruption, no one excels like Elon Musk, who through creative accounting methods has become the first Trillionaire.³⁶ Musk, like Trump and U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance is an aggressive supporter of Far Right politics in Europe from his headquarters in Texas.³⁷^,³⁸ Along with burgeoning corruption, Trump brings his own personal tackiness to everything around Washington and ruin to everything he touches. He destroyed large parts of the White House for his new Ballroom, ruined the reflecting pool on the Mall, wrecked the America 250 celebrations in Washington and held a UFC cage match on the lawn of the White House for his 80th birthday.³⁹^,⁴⁰^,⁴¹ If Nero really played the violin while Rome Burned, Trump is swinging his wrecking ball. He’s hit the gas pedal on American decline.

A Society Under Stress

Everywhere in the United States there is a sense of decay and stress in everyday life, leading to desperate acts of revenge. For example, during the past several years, the United States has witnessed a string of assassinations and attempted assassinations against the political and corporate establishment not seen since the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in July 2024, then-former President Donald J. Trump was wounded in Butler, Pennsylvania, the first of four serious attempts on his life. On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, a far right political operative, who advocated black-listing and political violence, was assassinated on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.⁴²^,⁴³ Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one the worst examples of corporate greed, was assassinated in New York City.⁴⁴ The accused killer is Luigi Mangione, who’s been embraced as a folk hero.⁴⁵

A massive bricks-and-mortar monument to corporate greed was destroyed by arson. Chamel Abdulkarim, a 29 year old warehouse worker at the Kimberley—Clark’s paper products live-streamed setting the building ablaze. Abdulkarim allegedly told his audience, according to the Los Angeles Times:⁴⁶

You know, if you’re not going to pay us enough ... to afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this. All you had to do was pay us enough to live.

The narrator says, as the camera focuses on several stacks of paper products beginning to catch fire - There goes your inventory.

Abdulkarim later texted messages: “I just cost these [expletive] billions,” “1% is a [expletive] joke.”⁴⁷ The 1.² million square foot Kimberly-Clark warehouse was located in Ontario, California, the western edge of the Inland Empire, a geographic region straddling Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, a tangle of road, rail, and airports that feed America’s logistics giants, including Amazon and UPS. According to a recent report:⁴⁸

Almost one in 15 of the 1.⁷ million people employed in Riverside and San Bernardino counties is a warehouse worker. Many earn low wages—75% of what the average worker in the region earns—while facing dangerous working conditions and setbacks in gaining union recognition.

I’m sure many warehouse workers feel the same way as Chamel Abdulkarim. If you get the feeling that America is about to explode, you are not wrong. California in many ways is the epicenter of the perpetual ‘American crisis’. The once famed ‘Golden State’, where endless prosperity and personal reinvention were once possible is now a faded memory, ravaged by year-round, massive wildfires, mind-boggling wealth inequality and housing crises, with visible and growing homelessness.⁴⁹ The fire at the Lineage’s massive warehouse in Los Angeles produced evacuations, and a week of stink in the nearby area added to the miasma of catastrophe.⁵⁰ Lineage is one of the major players in the global cold storage supply chain, with five hundred facilities in twenty countries.⁵¹ Tens of millions of pounds of food was left rotting because of the week-long fire. One nearby resident said the smell was unbearable, “It’s pretty much something like a dead body. Like a dead animal.”

The United States has never been big on workplace health and safety, despite the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and state-level versions of it.⁵² OSHA was always underfunded and understaffed. There’s been a Corporate “war on OSHA” since the 1990s.⁵³ A string of workplace explosions and fires at Lineage in Los Angeles, Garden Grove, California, and at a paper mill in Longview, Washington, where eleven people were killed, demonstrate that death stalks the American workplace, made worse by Trump’s gutting of federal agencies.⁵⁴^,⁵⁵^,⁵⁶ The Guardian reported in February:⁵⁷

The Trump EPA is now moving to kill most of the 2024 rules after it eliminated a public website that informs communities and first responders which chemicals are in use at facilities.⁵⁸ The White House has also targeted the Chemical Safety Board, which reviews accidents and develops actions to avoid a repeat.⁵⁹ The US experienced a chemical accident that harmed humans or the environment every other day on average between 2004-2025.⁶⁰^,⁶¹ Among recent high-profile incidents are a Clairton, Pennsylvania steel plant explosion that injured 10, and a Roseland, Louisiana oil facility explosion that caused oil to splatter onto homes as far as 20 miles away.⁶²^,⁶³

Parts of the country are becoming uninhabitable from poisoning and toxic waste from railroad derailments and chemical plants and now come the threats from AI data centers. Max Alavarez, editor-in-chief of The Real News Network (TRNN), who has done the most consistent coverage of these abandoned communities, puts it thus:

From the explosion of AI data centers to the increasing number of toxic spills, explosions, and industrial disasters happening across the country, corporations and the government are turning the USA into one giant “sacrifice zone.” In “red” states and “blue” states, in rural areas and urban areas, poor and working people are suffering the toxic effects of a crisis that has resulted from decades of deregulation, corporate capture of government, and the protection of private profits over the lives and health of the public.⁶⁴

The worst is still to come. As Summer’s death grip spreads across the northern hemisphere, the dread of a stifling humidity and scorching heat comes to the forefront of people’s minds, especially those who work in construction, delivery drivers, and unairconditioned manufacturing and warehouse facilities across the country.⁶⁵ Railroad derailments from heat twisting the tracks and poor maintenance are more than likely and are a growing global problem.⁶⁶ There doesn’t seem to be a week that goes by without a major derailment or workplace explosion. How many workers will die this summer on the job? That’s anyone’s guess, right now. USA Facts reports:⁶⁷

In 2004, 297 Americans died from excessive natural heat, the lowest figure recorded over the past two decades.⁶⁸ In 2018, 1,008 Americans died as a direct result of heat exposure. But in 2021, heat-related deaths increased to 1,600, a 59% uptick from only four years earlier, and a 439% increase from 2004. Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which actively tracks daily and weekly heat-related illnesses, shows that 1,714 US deaths in 2022 were due to “heat-related” causes.⁶⁹^,⁷⁰

The elderly, the socially isolated, and people of color, will die disproportionately in ever larger numbers during the next five months, while the United States’ meager, stingy, and punitive welfare state is being chopped away by Trump and his eager cohorts in the Cabinet and federal bureaucracy. Hunger⁷¹ and homelessness are rapidly increasing with working class people fearful of the future and the choices they are expected to make. Last November, the Guardian ran a story of the impending cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as Food Stamps, featuring Jessica Griffin of Fort Smith, Arkansas, a mother of three, who had recently lost her job. Her family was relying soley on her husband’s paycheck. The Guardian reported:⁷²

After rent and utility bills, there isn’t much left over to buy groceries, and she doesn’t have reliable transportation to get to food banks. She said: “I used to be able to buy $100 worth of groceries a week to feed a family of five, now even with one child out of the house $100 will only go a couple days,” she said. “The rent rates are so high now as well as groceries that families can barely afford to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads at the same time. So, it almost feels like we have two options, to either live in a house or live on the street and not starve.”

The ‘affordability crisis’, which propelled Trump to victory in the 2024 Presidential election is now far worse and runs through every political issue in the country, including the Iran War. The war, so far, has cost roughly $2 billion per day or an estimated $139 billion.⁷³ While Trump cleverly used affordability to defeat Kamala Harris, he’s appeared bored with the issue today. He called ‘affordability’ a ‘fake word’, and when asked if he would sign a popular, bipartisan housing bill, he called it a ‘big yawn’.⁷⁴^,⁷⁵

‘Shock-and-Awe’

Trump never accepted his defeat in the November 2020 election. Claiming voter fraud, which was rejected by the courts over and over again, he marshalled his most ardent supporters ranging from straight-up white supremacists, such as the Proud Boys, Nazis, to an odd ball assortment of conspiracy theorists, and so-called ‘anti-government’ constitutionalists, such as the Three Percenters, to march on the Capitol Building to stop the transfer of power to the incoming Biden Administration.⁷⁶^,⁷⁷ Trump spoke at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally financed, in-part, from a handful of corporate giants, such as Uline, one of the top distributors of packing, industrial, and business supplies, and Publix, one of the largest supermarket chains in the Southeastern United States.⁷⁸^,⁷⁹ Trump whipped up the crowd, many of whom were armed with automatic weapons, populated with military veterans and off-duty cops, who then marched on and ransacked parts of the Capitol Building.⁸⁰

Trump originally planned to lead the march on the Capitol Building himself, but the plan was nixed by the Secret Service, who whisked him back to the White House. Around 2000 to 2500 Trump supporters entered the building causing Congressmen, Senators, and their staff to flee. The coup attempt, however, failed. With ample evidence of Trump’s role in the first attempted coup by a losing candidate in a U.S. presidential election, the Democrats made a second attempt at impeachment, for his role in the January 6th insurrection, but fell ten votes of the necessary two-thirds short of conviction in the Senate.⁸¹ The Democrats created the special January 6th Commission to investigate the wide ranging conspiracy emanating from the White House and recommended cases for prosecutions.⁸² It went nowhere. In the meantime, the Supreme Court massively expanded presidential immunity for the former President Trump in a major ruling in the summer of 2024.⁸³

He came back into office for the second time in January 2025 with revenge on the top of his list. On his first day in office, Trump pardoned all 1500 January 6th participants charged with Federal crimes, including Steward Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, who were charged with sedition and sentenced to long prison terms.⁸⁴ Trump also came into office with a tighter staff to implement Project 2025 and a collection of sycophants, billionaires, and pedophile protectors, who would make up his cabinet alongside second rate, former Fox News hosts.⁸⁵^,⁸⁶^,⁸⁷^,⁸⁸ Cleaning out the ‘deep state’—the personnel who made up the federal civilian, law enforcement, military and intelligence bureaucracy—that he blamed for all his troubles was next. Making the situation more ominous was the conspicuous presence of the billionaire Nazi Elon Musk, that Trump gave, along with his DOGE crew, a wide ranging mission to loot, wreck, and shutdown federal agencies.⁸⁹^,⁹⁰

This initial phase of Trump’s second term had all the earmarks of a ‘shock and awe’ campaign against the federal safety net and those departments and agencies that are popular with working class and middle class people across the country: Health care (Medicare and Medicaid), the environment, veterans, and education. Musk’s role provoked real anger from most people. It led to the Tesla Takedown campaign that drew in tens of thousands of people across the United States and around the globe, targeting Musk’s Tesla showrooms and dealerships from big and middle-sized cities of the Midwest, Northeast and the Southwest.⁹¹^,⁹²^,⁹³^,⁹⁴^,⁹⁵ The campaign highlighted the grotesque absurdity of the world’s richest man slashing services for some of the poorest people in the United States and programs for combating AIDS and Ebola in Africa.⁹⁶ The Tesla Takedown campaign played a small, but important role in dramatically shifting the public image of Musk, making him so hated a figure that Trump eventually let him go.

Through executive orders, Trump ended collective bargaining rights for over one million federal workers or nearly 85 percent of the federal workforce. Unions representing federal workers, led by AFGE, the American Federation of Government Employees, are very weak organizations, with no right to strike, and low membership participation rates. They acted more like lobbying groups for Congress than traditional trade unions. To say they were ill-prepared for the Trump assault is an understatement. Workers came to work to find their departments ‘closed’ and were notified that they were laid off but gathered in large numbers around their shuttered workplace in Washington and around the country. AFGE was paralyzed and focused on lawsuits against Trump and DOGE.⁹⁷

The weak response from the major trade union federation, the American Federation of Labor—Congress of Industrial Organizations, raised fear of the previous Reagan era union busting, when the breaking of the air traffic controllers union, PATCO, led to an avalanche of outright union-busting and collapse into a generation-long retreat (concessions) that few unions ever recovered from.⁹⁸ Many feared a Trump sponsored “PATCO on Steroids.”⁹⁹ Yet, this hasn’t happened, so far. Kim Moody, veteran U.S. labor activist and historian, wrote about this unique situation for Tempest:¹⁰⁰

It wasn’t supposed to happen. Almost all the pundits predicted their continued decline. Donald Trump did everything he could to undermine them: gutted the National Labor Relations Board; fired tens of thousands of federal employees, withheld money from “blue” states; stopped many of Biden’s infrastructure projects; and a little too late threw the finger at a Ford worker. Still the unions grew. Almost half a million new workers (463,000) gained union representation in 2025.¹⁰¹^,¹⁰² OK, it wasn’t 1937, but it was the first increase of this size since 2008 when union representation increased by 518,000.¹⁰³

But, he also cautioned:

While the growth of unions is necessary to strengthen the power of the working class, the numbers by themselves don’t necessarily bring additional power to labor as a whole or even the unions that made the biggest gains. Without strong workplace organization, an involved membership, and a willingness to use the member’s power to withhold their labor, the balance of forces between labor and capital will not change.

While the strike statistics are still at historically low numbers, workers in a wide variety of industries and jobs continue something of a strike wave that began in the summer of 2020 during the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Not always successful, but the variety of strike action from healthcare, food processing, the auto industry, and defense industry means that workplace actions are not the rarity they once were.¹⁰⁴^,¹⁰⁵^,¹⁰⁶^,¹⁰⁷ But, there is also a hardening of the employers’ position at the bargaining table with a number of lockouts and the permanent hiring of scabs.¹⁰⁸^,¹⁰⁹

The unpopularity of DOGE’s activities forced many Congressmen, both Democratic and Republican, to hold ‘Town Hall’ or constituency meetings. Once staid and very small meetings, little more than a ‘meet and greet’ for Congressmen, a routine part of any reelection campaign, became invaded by hundreds of angry constituents enraged by DOGE, ICE violence and kidnappings, and the larger threat to democratic rights. Republicans came in for the worst of it. For example, ABC News reported, that shortly after Trump signed into law the “Big Beautiful Bill” on July 4, 2025:¹¹⁰

Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, faced a rowdy crowd at a town hall in Decorah, Iowa, as she praised President Donald Trump and the passage of a bill in the House.

“I was also proud to vote for President Trump’s one big, beautiful bill last week. This is a generational investment,” Hinson said -- to loud boos from the crowd.

Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), also faced an angry, aggressive crowd of constituents,

The month after Trump signed the bill into law, Flood faced a hostile crowd once more during an August town hall in Lincoln as the audience questioned its impact on Medicaid.¹¹¹^,¹¹²

“F------ liar!” one attendee shouted at Flood Tuesday while he was discussing declining violent crime rates and the Trump administration’s ongoing deportation efforts.

Many Town Hall meetings ended with constituents being arrested, forced to leave, some threatened with a stun gun.¹¹³

“Try Being an Opposition Party”

Democrats came in for different kinds of skewering from their constituents. One news outlet revealed the burgeoning frustration with Democratic lawmakers:

Democratic lawmakers have faced eruptions of anger at town hall meetings across the country this week, as constituents have coupled their fury over President Donald Trump’s actions with deep frustration over what they see as a feckless Democratic response.¹¹⁴

Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego were told to “fight dirtier” and “get in the mud” with Republicans. “We want you to show some of the backbone and strategic brilliance that Mitch McConnell would have in the minority,” a man told Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey. “They should try actually fighting for once. They should try to actually be the opposition party,” an attendee groused to CNN at a town hall held by Illinois Rep. Sean Casten.

The Democrats’ position towards Trump’s war on society was expressed by James Carville, the octogenarian political consultant:¹¹⁵

With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us. Only until the Trump administration has spiraled into the low 40s or high 30s in public approval polling percentages should we make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular. Until then, I’m calling for a strategic political retreat.

Opposition to Trump was driven from below. However, large liberal organizations closely allied with Democrats, such as Indivisible, mobilised to drive turnout at Congressional Town Halls, Tesla Takedown events, and most importantly at ‘Hands-Off’ and ‘No Kings’ demonstrations that brought out hundreds of thousands of people across the country.¹¹⁶ The largest ‘No Kings’ turnout was on March 28, 2025, when over 8 million people demonstrated at 3000 events across the country.¹¹⁷ The liberal base of the Democrats wanted their leaders, most notably the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), to fight Trump, but found them lacking in will or program at every turn.

Yet, Indivisible’s older, overwhelmingly middle class and suburban character was also a problem. It was reflected in the turnout, with few industrial unions, young people or people of color participating. Dana Fisher, a professor in the School of International Service at American University, told Thomas Edsall of the New York Times: “We’re not seeing them [young people] in the streets at No Kings events”. She provided the following data about the three No Kings protests: “At No Kings 1 (June 14, 2025) the median age was 36, at No Kings 2 (Oct. 18, 2025) the median age was 44, and at No Kings 3 (March 28, 2026) it was 48. Clearly, it’s getting older.”

The participants in the initial No Kings Day demonstrations, Fisher wrote, were “predominantly white, highly educated, female and middle-aged.”¹¹⁸ Liberal nostalgia for a lost America has little appeal for younger people, and especially for younger people of color. One self-described Gen Z participant in a ‘No Kings’ demonstration wrote into the NYT to add to Edsall’s article.¹¹⁹

First, the protests evoke an America that my generation feels we don’t know. The No Kings movement centers largely on the idea of restoration — of democratic principles, political normalcy and American decency. Gen Z, having come of age in the Trump era of political discord and the erosion of democracy, has hardly known any of these things. Second, precisely because the No Kings protests evoke the past, they fail to appeal to our appetite for change. Young people by nature desire to reform, rectify, reshape. We want to tear down the existing structures we deem unjust and build better ones in their place. To stand against apartheid, sexual harassment or police brutality is to dismantle the present and construct the future.

This conservatism is akin to missing an open goal, as opposition to the Trump administration is widespread across the political spectrum, including disillusion within the MAGA base that led to the high profile resignation from Congress of former Trump fanatic Marjorie Taylor Greene. Indeed, Trump’s policies raise the spectre of House of Representatives and Senate, where they have razor thin or thin majorities. While Trump maintained his iron grip on the party’s elected officials, despite his abusive treatment of them over the years, he may end up losing both Houses of Congress. But few doubt that the Democrats are capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The New York Times editorial board recently rang the alarm bell:¹²⁰

Handed the chance to litigate what the party actually believes, Democrats have mostly declined. What is the party’s answer on immigration, moving beyond its proper outrage at President Trump’s methods to include an affirmative account of who should be allowed in and how? What would it do about the cost of housing, beyond lamenting it and suggesting inadequate fixes? What does it want from the public education system? What is its response to the disruption that artificial intelligence is about to send through the work force and society more broadly?

While all of this is true, the problems with the Democrats run much deeper. Ricard Nixon’s former strategist, the late Kevin Phillips, who later in life broke far to the left, once described them as “history’s second-most enthusiastic capitalist party.”¹²¹ Its weak opposition to Trump is rooted in it being a party of capital but also the one given the mission of managing societal discontent. As American Marxist’s Joel Jordan and Robert Brenner wrote a generation ago:¹²²

The Democratic Party has been a graveyard for progressive mass movements because the forces that dominate it — both its top capitalist leadership and its middle rung leadership, composed of trade union officials and middle-class leaders of the Black, Latino and women’s movements — systematically oppose militant mass struggles. Capitalists oppose such struggles because they threaten their profits and property. The middle class leaders oppose them because they tend not only to threaten their positions as individuals, but also the organizations from which they draw their lifeblood — their jobs, careers, and form of life. As a result, these leaders are single-mindedly committed to the safety of the electoral road as a substitute for potentially catastrophic confrontations with capital and the state, and as a way of channeling popular resistance back into the Democratic Party where it can be disoriented and derailed.

For those sections of the American Left, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), that see the Democrats as the focus of their political strategy, they have and will run up against this crushing reality. A series of spectacular election triumphs over the last year, especially in New York City, have also angered the Democratic Party establishment, who view the DSA as interlopers, even called “parasites” by some, and forced others to declare the ‘capitalist’ nature of the party.¹²³ Nine years ago, when polling revealed the popularity of socialism among young people, Democratic Party leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA.), eagerly proclaimed during a live CNN Town Hall, ‘We’re capitalist”.¹²⁴ In late June, after the victory of DSA members in New York’s Democratic primaries, centrist Democrats in Congress issued a public letter, “Promise to America,” which declared the party was “capitalist, not socialist.”¹²⁵ There is certainly a higher volume of attacks on DSA inside the party than just a few years ago. It raises questions about whether DSA can survive inside the Democratic Party, yet the career of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) demonstrates that the DSA’s elected officials have an infinite capacity to accommodate themselves to the party establishment, whether the membership does is another question.¹²⁶

Yet, as radical activist Arun Gupta has asked, “What do we have to show for 25 years of social movements and protests?¹²⁷ From ‘The Battle of Seattle’ to the military invasion of Los Angeles, mass protests have erupted time and again, but to what end?” Well organised, media saturated, legal demonstrations under the sway of the liberal allies of the Democratic establishment have achieved little and diverted away from movement building. Efforts to put more of a trade union stamp on opposition to Trump, such as the “May Day Strong” coalition led by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), have proved underwhelming because of their close ties to the Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson.¹²⁸ Theresa Power, a socialist and activist in the CTU, wrote in the Midwest Socialist:¹²⁹

May Day showed the limits of CTU’s political influence. Unions should, of course, make use of politicians’ support where they can get it. However, far too often, the CTU leadership of President Stacy Davis Gates and Vice President Jackson Potter use the strategy of leveraging friendly Democrats as a one-size-fits-all shortcut. Our power is not primarily in dues money flowing to electoral campaigns, but in our power as vital workers with social authority and the means to shut things down. In their consistent focus on political influence, CTU leaders neglect the tools of rank-and-file organizing and class struggle. Make no mistake: Members can see that they are being made into observers, rather than participants, in our own union’s actions. We need more confidence in our independent worker power.

Resistance from Below

While mainstream liberals and trade union leaders were frustrated with their party, they were largely content to organise large, legal demonstrations with a very narrow messaging. But those really fighting for community and immigrant rights haven’t been content to wait for the next election cycle. Trump suffered his first big defeat in Minneapolis, where the suffocating confines of the Democratic Party were less in play, despite the state’s top official being Governor Tim Walz, the Democrats 2024 candidate for Vice-President, and where its liberal and trade union allies had to follow rather than define the struggle against the ICE occupation of the city and state.¹³⁰ This was a grassroots and relatively spontaneous struggle from below. It was a knee jerk reaction from decent people to seeing their neighbors and friends being hunted and humiliated. It was revulsion at the Trump project at its most cruel; a rejection of Trump’s determination to terrorise brown and black people. ICE and the Border Patrol led by Greg Bovino looked and acted like the Brownshirts and Klansmen of historical memory but now they were in federal uniforms.

But Minneapolis also had an important organisational backbone from progressives and from grassroots trade unionists. Kieran Knudson, a working CWA local union president and leading anti-ICE activist, told me what made the struggle different than in other parts of the country:¹³¹

In the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul several factors combined to produce a mass resistance movement that was confident, capable, and resilient. For several years a coalition of unions initiated by SEIU Local 26 had been meeting and discussing the political situation, labor strategy, and possibilities of joint action. The Educators unions in both Minneapolis and Saint Paul have each organized strikes in recent years that have activated their memberships and connected them with broader movements. Activists had built up organization and influence in the immigrant, community, and labor networks such as MIRAC (Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee) that held large street rallies and marches during Operation Metro Surge.

The Workers Solidarity Circle - a united front of class struggle unionists from four different organizations - held mass meetings and Workers Assemblies prior to and during the ICE occupation that created spaces for workers from dozens of different union locals (and those with no union) to democratically discuss and debate strategy and tactics - including the concept of the general strike and the practical steps needed to be able to call and carry out such action. But arguably the most important factor in Minnesota was the experience of the 2020 George Floyd Uprising - a watershed event that has defined the politics and the culture of the region ever since.

From our perspective it was the radical and grassroots nature of this resistance movement that threw the Trump administration into disarray. Trump fired Border Patrol chief, Greg Bovino, fired Attorney General, Pam Bondi, demoted Head of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, following the defeat in Minneapolis. Tulsi Gabbard,¹³² the Director of National Intelligence has announced her retirement following the U.S. defeat in the initial phase of the Iran War. The Trump presidency is in deep crisis, but this makes it all the more dangerous – at least in the short term. Trump has already questioned the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections meaning there is a looming threat of a mini-January 6th style coup hanging over them. Pro-Trump state governments, on cue, have redrawn Congressional districts eliminating predominantly Black districts, while Trump has also challenged the legitimacy of voting rolls in Democratic states. Trump influencers, like Steve Bannon, have called for ICE to be deployed during the midterm elections. They are terrified by any sign of a struggle from below and will do anything to smash it. The next six months will prove pivotal to the future of U.S. politics and society.