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HOW TO ORGANIZE OUR WAY OUT OF THE TRUMP-MUSK PUTSCH  
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Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg
February 19, 2025
The Nation
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_ A plan to harness grassroots energy—and to hold Democratic
leaders accountable. Our predecessors deposed a brain-addled king;
crushed the violent insurrectionists of a slaveholding confederacy;
they forced the robber barons to contend with workers. _

Photo from Save Our Services Feb. 19 rally in New York City, posted
on Facebook page of Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "Federal workers
do work that is the lifeblood of our society, keeping essential
services running and our communities strong.", "Tonight, across the
country and here in New York, federal workers and working class people
came together for a Day of Action to fight back against Elon Musk’s
assault on federal services and mass layoffs...Keep showing up. Keep
standing together."

 

For the millions of Americans now desperate to reclaim our democracy
from the plutocratic vandalism of the second Trump administration, the
main challenge before us is simple: We have to unify and fight back.
This isn’t new and it isn’t rocket science—the one thing we know
from historical fights against authoritarians is that success depends
on a persistent, courageous, broad-based, and unified opposition. What
that should look like and what that demands of each of us is the heart
of the new movement to defeat a more disciplined and lawless Trump
White House, but before we get to where we’re going, we have to
start with where we are.

We run a national pro-democracy grassroots movement organization
that’s been helping to marshal local volunteer groups against
Trumpism for nearly a decade. Trump’s innovation in his second term
is his strategic alignment with neoreactionary forces
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in Elon Musk. As one underground memo
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in pro-democracy circles recently explained, the neoreactionary goal
is “replacing the existing Constitutional system with a privatized
state structure akin to a corporation, with a monarch-like figure at
the top modeled after a CEO.” It’s no wonder that historians
like Timothy Snyder
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Richardson
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raising the alarm about a boiling constitutional crisis.

It’s hard not to sound alarmist about such alarming events. Whether
we call it a coup, a constitutional crisis, a hostile takeover, or
something else, we side with the two-thirds of Democrats
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want Democrats in Congress to oppose Trump at every turn rather than
appease him.

From our perspective as political organizers, the most important thing
about this agenda is that it’s wildly unpopular. Project 2025, the
governing blueprint for the neoreactionary ideology, polled at just 4
percent support
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the election. The marginal voters who gave Trump another term wanted
lower prices for bread, and instead they’re being served a hot dish
of techno-dystopian fascism with a side of egg shortages.

For those of us looking to break the MAGA coalition, this should be a
major political opportunity. Trump and his allies in the White House
are overreaching dramatically. And rather than acting as a check on
executive power, congressional Republicans are rubber-stamping
nominees
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helping Trump and Musk consolidate their power
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So far, they have not paid much of a political price. To change that,
we need an opposition capable of making Republicans own their
complicity.

A week after the election, we published _Indivisible: A Guide to
Democracy on the Brink_ [[link removed]], an
open-source handbook for building nationwide opposition to the coming
authoritarian takeover. The first step: total opposition to Trump’s
Project 2025.

Congressional Democrats should lead this charge, but so far, their
response has been sluggish, unimaginative, ineffective, and—an
absolutely killer liability in our algorithmically driven
world—boring. Senate Democrats embraced “strategic silence
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on Trump’s nominees. Many House Democrats have focused
on professing powerlessness
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voicing an interest in reasonable-sounding bipartisan compromise. It
hasn’t worked. Even before Trump’s inauguration, too many
Democrats helped expedite a MAGA immigration bill to his desk
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Democrats have provided votes for almost all of Trump’s cabinet
nominees. There have been moments of fight—but they haven’t been
linked to an overarching strategy to make Democrats an effective
opposition party.

Democrats seem to be waiting for Trump, Musk, and MAGA to naturally
become unpopular, instead of working overtime to _make_ them
unpopular. We can’t wait. We need a unified, aggressive, and
creative opposition in this country. Here’s what that federal
opposition could look like in practice:

SLOW THE SENATE. Lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress don’t
have a big red “stop everything” button—but the Democratic
Senate minority can slow business as usual and dramatize its
opposition. One expert in congressional procedure, Norm Ornstein,
has detailed these tactics
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famous filibuster to simply forcing Senate leaders to read the daily
journal prior to conducting legislative business. One concrete
example: Senator Brian Schatz has placed a “hold” on all State
Department appointees—a major obstacle to Senate Republicans who
want to speed through diplomatic confirmations. Senate Democrats
should do this for all nominees, of which there are hundreds.

MAKE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS WORK FOR DEMOCRATIC VOTES. When their
votes are not just symbolic, Democrats should filibuster where they
can, force Republicans to squirm for as many hours as possible, and
extract a serious political price for standing down. The next obvious
leverage point for Democrats here is the March 14 funding deadline
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Republicans will inevitably fail to pull their majority together to
fund the government on their own, and Democrats should extract what
they can when Speaker Mike Johnson comes begging for votes.

BREAK THE NORMS AROUND CONGRESSIONAL COLLEGIALITY. It’s typically
considered rude for one member of Congress to confront another in
public. But these aren’t typical times. The complicity of
congressional Republicans in the trashing of our democracy cries out
for the kind of loud and frequent confrontation that will cause
members of the _Washington Post _editorial board to clutch their
pearls. For those Republicans who refuse to face their constituents,
Democrats should travel to their districts or states in order to
publicize the real costs of MAGA appeasement to working families
there. For those members who share concerns privately while declining
to say anything publicly, congressional Democrats should expose them
for the cowards they are. Get creative—and give protesters and
activists a morally righteous conflict to rally around.

WORK WITH THE NEW SURGE IN ANTI-MUSK, ANTI-TRUMP GRASSROOTS
ENERGY. Congressional Democrats should treat the current historic
popular protests against the Trump-Musk putsch like an opportunity
rather than a threat. Since November, we’ve seen record-breaking
numbers of new local Indivisible groups forming and new members. These
local volunteer groups are focusing on their own elected
officials—Democrats, independents, and Republicans. They’re making
calls, protesting, showing up at congressional offices, attending town
halls, and demanding accountability from their representatives.

This is, as they say, what democracy looks like. And the only
pro-democracy party in the country ought to tap into that energy with
enthusiasm.

We’re under no illusion that any senator or representative can
summon forth the opposition on their own. It’s up to each of us to
try, and learn, and improve, and build. Constituents should be
organizing in their own communities as engaged neighbors,
pro-democracy volunteers, and educators. Rank-and-file Democrats
should be feeding off that energy and harnessing its power. And
Democrats in leadership should be corralling their caucuses to produce
a unified front with aggressive, creative tactics and messaging.
Nobody has all the answers, and we’re all going to have to try,
fail, go back to the drawing board, and try again.

These are frightening times, and frightening times call for active,
courageous leadership. Musk and Trump are really seeking to annex the
operations of the state to their pet vanity projects, bigotries, and
conspiracy theories , but our enemy is not one or two men. Our enemy
is apathy, cynicism, and fatalism; the pernicious,
authoritarian-friendly belief that we are merely victims of world
events rather than active participants in a global struggle for
freedom and justice. Every time one of us—a family member, a
community organizer, a representative, a senator—takes a step
forward in this fight, a thousand pairs of eyes watch and learn.
Courage is contagious.

Take that step, and steel yourself with the knowledge that you are the
defender of a 250-year experiment in self-governance—a real-life
pluralistic democracy, imperfect as it is, striving to be more
perfect. Our predecessors deposed a brain-addled king; they crushed
the violent insurrectionists of a slaveholding confederacy; they
forced the robber barons to contend with workers and unions; they
kicked the Nazis’ asses throughout Europe; they broke the back of
the southern segregationist political bloc; they fought back against
the terrorizing forces at Stonewall. We have planted ourselves in
stubborn opposition to monomaniacal fascists of one form or another
for a quarter of a millennium. No entitled reality-TV has-been backed
by an addle-brained billionaire who cheats at video games is going to
roll over us now.

We will not finish this fight, but we can each be damn sure to do our
part while we’re here. Together, we are the opposition, and this
is our republic—if we can keep it
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This is the part where we keep it. 

_[EZRA LEVIN is a cofounder and co–executive director of
Indivisible_

_LEAH GREENBERG is a cofounder and co–executive director of
Indivisible.]_

_Copyright c 2025 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
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to The Nation for just $24.95!_

* coup
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* Donald Trump
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* Elon Musk
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* GOP
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* Fascism
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* resistance
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* Protest
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* Labor Unions
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* Indivisible
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* MoveOn
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* Working Families Party
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* WFP
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* economic boycotts
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* Resistance 2.0
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* Democrats
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* Democratic Party
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* Congress
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* Trump 2.0
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* Dictatorial Coup
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* Administrative Coup
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* power grab
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* J.D. Vance
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* Unconstitutional
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* Project 2025
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* Separation of Powers
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* Layoffs
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* State and Local Government Layoffs
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* Government Shutdown
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