What You Can Do About Trump

We are only a few months into Donald Trump’s second term, and the administration’s predilection for taking aggressive action and defying democratic norms has already left many people feeling dispirited and powerless. What should liberals, moderates and conservatives who are concerned about the rule of law, the health of civil society and the preservation of basic small-l liberal ideals be doing at the moment? We asked a dozen leading thinkers and doers for concrete steps that Americans might take if they want to have a good answer to the question that many of us might get asked in the future: “What did you do to stand up to Trump, grandma/grandpa?” These are their replies.

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Write Some Checks

Christina Greer is an associate professor at Fordham University and co-host of the FAQ.NYC podcast.

So what can “ordinary people” do in this moment of rampant cruelty and incompetence? Political tithing. Just as one donates to religious organizations to invest in their growth and success, we must do the same for our democracy. 

When looking at some of the (to put it in political science terms) jokers and busters walking the halls of Congress or sitting in seats in Albany, I realize that small contributions to competent candidates can help create a more robust and competent crop of elected officials in state houses and Congress. 

Far too many people coast into state houses with little competition and a minuscule vote count. Many of those individuals parlay that first stepping stone into elected positions at the federal level and are then in line for important leadership positions throughout government. Contributing funds to quality candidates and elected officials allows us to create the democracy we want to see.

When elected officials say they are too scared to speak out at this moment, it is time for them to go. If elected officials are blindly supporting policies antithetical to our values, it is time to vote them out. Money in politics is sadly a very sobering reality. I want to make sure my elected officials can spend more time thinking about policy and writing clear-eyed legislation instead of sitting in a call center dialing for dollars most of their day. I want to make sure individuals who have the passion and courage to stand up in this moment have the resources to take out incumbents who have lost their way. I don’t just support candidates in my area, I support candidates across the county in races large and small. 

Financially supporting candidates and elected officials who have the courage to speak out and fight for substantive legislation is just one small way ordinary folks can do something in this moment. 

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Build Some Bridges

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is “Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy.”

Often, when an authoritarian faction moves to dismantle democracy, elites are the first line of defense. In the case of President Trump and his MAGA movement, however, ordinary people are in the vanguard. That’s because Trump moved quickly to harass, intimidate and de-fund institutions like law firms, universities and tech and media companies that might oppose him. As a result, many sought to placate him. By contrast, he has little leverage against ordinary folks who do not depend on federal dollars and whose voices he cannot easily chill. That makes direct action — public protests, town hall meetings, even quilting — essential for slowing his momentum, diminishing his public approval, and denting his claim to a popular mandate.

In the longer run, though, indirect action is just as important, if not more so. By that I mean action which diminishes the country’s vulnerability to demagogic, divisive and fear-mongering political actors. That’s why I recommend taking a look at Braver Angels, a national grassroots movement aimed at reducing toxic polarization.

Originally founded by a handful of activists after the 2016 election, Braver Angels borrowed methods from marriage counseling to hold workshops in which equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats relearned how to push past their stereotypes and reconnect as citizens. Since then, Braver Angels has developed a rich array of workshops, debates and other programs for schools and universities, legislatures and political groups, churches and communities. It engages and trains volunteers in every state. The single most common reaction to Braver Angels programs: “We are not as divided as we believe.” Which is true. In fact, just showing people that polarization is exaggerated can reduce it.

If Braver Angels isn’t right for you, many other groups work in the depolarization space. The insight they share is correct: Rebuilding our civic culture is the only lasting way to make America great again.

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Shine More Light in Dark Corners

Bruce Western is a sociologist and president-elect at the Russell Sage Foundation.

A hundred days into the second Trump administration, friends and colleagues in the social science research community have lost grant funding, faced hiring freezes and confronted political attacks on their universities. These are scholars who study poverty, employment, health, crime and countless other indicators of the well-being of American society. 

Social research makes a critical contribution to our civic discourse. For scholars who study the devastation of opioid addiction, or solitary confinement in our prisons, or the epidemic of loneliness afflicting America’s youth, social research shines a light on dark places. Research brings objective evidence to bear on urgent problems for policy. Research informs public conversations at the heart of our democracy. At a time when social media algorithmically manipulates reality, social science grounds us in systematic data collection and analysis.

In such a time, the job of social science — shining a light, bearing witness — is indispensable. There’s no question that we researchers are in a bind: The environment for rigorous research is hostile, but the need is urgent. While university leaders are beginning to coordinate and defend themselves in court, our core institutions are stressed to a breaking point and the safety of our most disadvantaged communities is threatened.

The great sociologist, Max Weber, said science is a vocation — we are called to it. Although times of crisis can feel paralyzing, we must follow our vocation and get out in the world and study our pressing social problems. We should find ways to communicate our work broadly, beyond the bubble of the university, which can be too insular and elitist. We should engage with those ideas and communities that, in good faith, challenge our own. The American experiment is facing an historic test. Understanding a moment like this is the whole point of social research. We should get to work.

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Look Harder

Adam Klasfeld is co-founder and editor-in-chief of All Rise News.

The levers of power are always closer to people than they realize. 

We recently ran a story on All Rise News about Georgetown Law students who created a more than 800-row spreadsheet detailing which major law firms resisted or capitulated to Donald Trump’s attacks. Now, some powerful firms face recruitment problems because students declined interviews with ones that settled with the administration. 

Having worked as a legal journalist for nearly two decades, I’m also a strong believer in the impact of attending court proceedings. Take Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan’s recent arrest. The impromptu protests outside the courthouse made public outcry part of the story. Imagine if nobody showed up. 

Quietly attending a courtroom hearing can have the same impact, and as an added bonus, you also get the chance to see compelling and historic proceedings. I witnessed the moment a jury convicted Trump of 34 felonies as a journalist, but anybody who went to the courthouse early enough could have, too. It’s our constitutional right, and it’s a way to signal that the cases are being watched. 

Using internal data from the app 5 Calls, we’ve reported on what drives people to call their representatives. We list protests and congressional town halls every week. The options are everywhere. People just need to know where to look, and helping the public find them is our editorial mission.

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Do Better

Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute focused on urban economics. 

It’s been almost 10 years since Donald J. Trump glided down that escalator to launch his joke of a long-shot presidential candidacy, and Democrats still haven’t figured out how to neutralize him. The one neat trick: When you’re obsessively focused on Trump, you’ll only get more Trump. Focus on something else, anything else — but most productively, on the void of competent politics and policies that got us Trump in the first place (and the second place).

Trump won in 2016 and won again in 2024 because of deep anxiety about bipartisan business as usual. Eight years before 2016, the massive bailouts of Wall Street created both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party — but the Democrats decided that it was a good idea to run the spouse of the president who had deregulated Wall Street. Hillary Clinton had herself taken six-figure fees from the banks.

Eight years later, after Trump’s personal and policy failures had become all too apparent, his re-taking the White House was almost inexplicable – except it was perfectly explicable to any normal person not in the Democratic bubble. For most of the Biden administration, voters had been very clear about their mounting concerns over uncontrolled immigration and inflation as well as persistently higher crime in Democratic cities.

The elite Democratic answer was to ignore these concerns. Where was the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, when a line of unvetted migrants formed around the Roosevelt Hotel, to national and global headlines? You lost your power because you didn’t use it. Democrats fretted over why voters didn’t appreciate the two massive bills Biden signed into law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but voters didn’t appreciate them because they were the wrong laws at the wrong time: massively stimulatory to an economy already running hot.

What to do now? Democratic state and local leaders should focus on what they actually control: basic day-to-day competence in public safety and public services. It would be refreshing, for example, if New York’s Governor Gov. Hochul actually took some responsibility over why New York released an illegal migrant on a serious felony theft charge earlier this year, only for this migrant to similarly victimize a woman in Washington, DC. What will Hochul do to prevent similar incidents?

It would be refreshing, too, if Hochul, in this year’s state budget, hadn’t immediately turned to a multi-billion-dollar annual tax hike on downstate jobs to fund the transit system’s perennial deficit, just months after launching congestion pricing to fund the transit system, with no public debate or discussion.

As for what ordinary people can do: maybe scroll past Trump’s latest outrage, and learn a little about what your state and local government do: what’s the crime rate in your city, compared to a decade ago? Are local parents happy with the public schools?

For now, Trump’s second-honeymoon antics are so outrageous — a tariff in every pot, changing every day — that public attention isn’t on the chronic workaday government failures that got us Trump in the first place. But every time the Trump administration flouts a court order or deports an American child, his loyal opposition in the Democratic party should remember first, before saying a word: we failed the people so badly, that the voters freely picked this guy over us — twice.

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Get in the (Social Media) Fray

Cara Eckholm is a fellow at the Social Science Research Council and the founder of Eckholm Studios, an advisory firm. 

Use your voice on social media. 54 percent of American adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. People are increasingly getting their news from TikTok. 

The right has an entire media ecosystem catered to this new media environment. It starts at the top, with Karoline Leavitt posting get-ready-with-me videos. But it also includes Joe Rogan and the many derivatives of his podcast, and micro-influencers espousing the ideal of Trumpism in local politics — folks like the Queens Crapper in New York, who are pernicious Twitter shit-talkers. 

The left really does not have an equivalent. Instead, we have the 1% arguing amongst themselves over the definition of the term “abundance,” and Charli XCX describing Kamala as “BRAT." The former is far too highbrow for the average American to care or even notice, while the latter is totally devoid of substance. What we actually need are thoughtful political takes delivered in formats that people will consume. 

We are starting to see a shift among the next generation of electeds. For example, Chi Ossé’s “Why Shit Not Working” Instagram series has garnered millions of views because it contains real messages delivered in comedic, short formats. But I want to see more everyday folks on the left giving social media a shot — and yes, that may mean you have to talk policy while applying make-up. 

Among New York's intelligentsia, I find there is still a tendency to write off people who succeed on social media as “unserious.” But if you stick exclusively to the “serious,” no one consumes it. Folks on the left need to lighten up a bit to have a shot at electoral politics.   

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We Are Not Powerless

Errol Louis is a Vital City contributing writer. He is political anchor at NY1 News. 

President Trump’s weaponization of the federal budget is most likely to hit New Yorkers hard. There’s been no shortage of news coverage of the half-dozen-or-so prosecutors in the Southern District of New York who resigned rather than cooperate in the Trump administration’s attempt to arrange a quid pro quo deal to dismiss criminal charges against Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for cooperation in facilitating the mass deportation of migrants. 

But much less attention has been lavished on the nearly 47,000 federal government workers who live in New York City. Like other employees, they have been subjected to sudden firings, public denigration and, in the case of Transportation Safety Administration workers, an abrupt cancellation of collective bargaining rights that is currently being disputed in court.

There are plenty of ways to fight back against the chaotic daily disruptions emanating from Washington. Organized call-in campaigns to one’s member of Congress are more effective than most people realize: 20 calls on the same subject on any given day will definitely get a politician’s attention and 50 or more will pretty much shut down the office’s ability to do regular business. 

If you feel like putting money where your mouth is, spend a few minutes on the website of Oath, a Democratic platform launched in 2023 that analyzes hundreds of data points to identify races all over the country where small donations can have the greatest effect. “It is data driven, and we have receipts,” the group’s founder, Brian Derrick, told me. The majority of my team are engineers and data scientists, and we work to analyze where dollars are likely to have the greatest impact in advancing a particular goal.” A similar group, the States Project, which was founded by ex-state senator Daniel Squadron, organizes groups of small-money donors and directs the cash to local candidates. 

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Think Big, Don’t Despair

Rosalie Genevro is an architectural historian and urbanist.

I have been trying to operate on the basic premise that action builds hope, and that inaction and despair are mutually reinforcing. The actions I am taking and the ideas guiding them are the following:

1. Put your body in the street; join with others on every possible occasion both to show the size of the resistance and to take strength from acting with others who are appalled and showing up against the illegality, unconstitutionality and fundamental cruelty of this administration. 
2. Study and be prepared to use all the tools of non-violent resistance, including a general strike.
3. Read Timothy Snyder, Jamelle Bouie and M. Gessen.
4. Provide as much financial support as possible to organizations in sectors being attacked: independent, non-corporate media; environmental groups; cultural and education organizations whose missions serve fairness and inclusion.
5. Boycott companies acquiescing to and encouraging the administration’s move to autocracy and deep corruption and cronyism.
6. Keep multiple timeframes in mind simultaneously. The need for resistance through immediate protest is urgent; so is the need to continue the fight on matters of long-term urgency, especially climate change.
7. Imagine the processes and goals of the reconstruction.   

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Engage Face-to-Face 

Dave Fleischer directed the team that developed deep canvassing; he writes on voter persuasion on Substack.

Trump’s strategy is dehumanization. Every time he humiliates, caricatures, ostracizes, bullies, arrests, deports or incarcerates, he creates terror. That’s what will end our country.

The job of those who disagree with where he’s trying to take the nation is to humanize: to be clear about who and what we’re fighting for. Don’t say “Medicaid.” Instead, talk about “making sure every mother and child can see a doctor and can get a prescription filled when they’re sick.” Sure, mention Medicaid, but explain what Medicaid looks like in real life. Don’t say “due process.” Instead, say “stop Trump from arresting people just because of their skin color — stop his mass arrests without evidence they’ve done anything wrong.” Don’t say “tariffs.” Instead, say, “stop Trump from destroying our jobs and any savings we’ve managed to put aside.”

Go beyond mere words. Share real-life experience. Tell a story about someone you love who got sick, and what happened when they did or didn’t get medical care. 

Describe how someone you love just lost their nest egg or job. Ask the person you’re meeting if they have faced prejudice firsthand: perhaps they were judged unfairly, or even experienced race-based assault by criminals or the police. 

When we share our stories — one-on-one, face-to-face, in person — we not only give each “issue" a human face. We connect.

Finally, focus on the 15,000 voters who will decide our country’s fate. Just 15,000 voters in three to five districts will decide who controls the House of Representatives in 2026. 

You’re probably within driving distance of one. Volunteer now. Volunteer specifically to connect with voters face-to-face. Start now. Help the Democrats win. It’s up to you and me and our friends. Are we willing to talk with some people who aren’t yet with us?

We need them. And they need us.

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By Any Means

Candice Jones is president and CEO of the Public Welfare Foundation. She previously served as director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice.

When asked how he planned to bring about change so that Black Americans would be seen as human beings, Malcolm X responded, “By any means necessary.” 

Today, we find ourselves in another “by any means necessary” moment as fundamental freedoms are being rapidly eroded. We must do whatever is needed to ensure justice in this moment. 

It’s going to require a broad range of solutions. It’s going to take anything and everything that works. We cannot be selective with the methods and means. We need every single avenue to be explored, every method entertained and every voice welcomed to create solutions to answer the questions of our day.

That means we all have a role to play. From lawyers to podcasters, organizers to parent-teacher association moms, clergy to emergency responders, it will take all of us. The Building Movement Project’s social change ecosystem map is one tangible tool to help identify your part of the movement. 

The reality is that no one is coming to save us. We are the leaders we are waiting for. It’s us, in all of our humanity and in all of our power. We need to plant our feet and stand with the knowledge that we have every right to be here and every right to make our voices heard. And when we each say “yes” to holding up our piece of the sky, we move closer to realizing the future we demand.

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Invest in Civic institutions and Life

Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost are the directors of “Drop Dead City,” now showing at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

What’s so striking about the first 100 days of the Trump administration is not just the extent to which they have dismantled much of the federal government — and impacted the world economy — but how quickly many of our most trusted civic institutions, the pillars of civil society, have, at least until now, remained quiet, and in some cases been almost complicit.

One wonders what Simon Rifkind, a man who played a central role in organizing a government-led rescue of New York City in 1975, would have to say about the response of so many of the nation's most esteemed law firms, including the one that used to bear his name, Paul Weiss.  

The 1975 fiscal crisis, which we tell the story of in our new film, “Drop Dead City,” unfortunately teaches us that we often must reach a collective low before we can come together and dig ourselves out. But even then, you need a shared appreciation of the city’s — or in this case the country’s — civic institutions to help reconstruct something better. This was true in New York City in 1975, and it is true in America today. 

We must invest in strengthening the civic institutions that can help us resist but also rebuild: our college and universities, the organizations that protect human and legal rights, law firms and media, both national and hyper-local. This includes giving money, of course, especially with so many nonprofits experiencing horrific cuts, but that’s not where it ends.

If you can’t contribute, show your support. Speak out on your social media platforms, go to meetings, talk to your friends and family. This is a critical moment to flex those civic muscles and do everything you can to get people to dispose of their apathy and to get involved. Go out and register people to vote.

What was so striking about New York City during the fiscal crisis was not just how overextended the city was, or how poor the bookkeeping was, but how quickly our institutions can atrophy and grow weak. What allowed New York City to turn around was the shared belief that the city was too important to fail, that we had enough in common, even with all our divisions, that we could come together and trust one another to come up with a plan. We need that same confidence today. The health of our democracy, today and for future generations, requires our attention.