Resistance to Trump is everywhere — inside the first 50 days of mass protest

From mass refusals to boycotts to walkouts, regular Americans are bravely pushing back against the administration. Their actions are diverse and multiplying — and already having an impact.

It’s been a long six weeks since Donald Trump was sworn into office amid a Nazi salute and a machine-gun barrage of 89 executive orders. We’ve been struggling for our lives, our country and our world ever since.

From boycotts to mass noncompliance to street demonstrations, the response to the Trump administration’s policies has consisted of an impressive range of nonviolent tactics.

More than just outraged protests, people are thwarting raids, refusing to obey unjust orders, standing up to bully politics and taking risks to do the right thing. The resistance is diverse, multi-stranded and feisty — and some of it is working.
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Why we need a new free speech movement

And why universities should sue the Trump regime for abridging the First Amendment rights of their institutions and their students

The Trump regime is actively suppressing speech at major American universities.

Trump’s recent executive orders bar diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at all educational institutions that receive federal funds.

Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests but did not define what he meant by illegal protests.

On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University for allowing peaceful protests the regime dislikes.

On Saturday, Trump’s immigration officials arrested a Columbia graduate student — who is a permanent resident of the United States with a green card and an American wife — and sent him to a prison in Louisiana. Why? He did not engage in criminal activity. The graduate student peacefully expressed political views that the regime dislikes.

Then on Monday, the Trump regime warned 60 universities that they could face penalties for allowing peaceful demonstrations and speech that the administration dislikes.

And on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, told reporters that Columbia had refused to help the regime identify people engaged in speech the regime found objectionable, and warned, “We expect all America’s colleges and universities to comply with this administration’s policy.”

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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 10, 2025
  …
  According to MarketWatch, this is the worst start to a presidential term since 2009, when the country was in the subprime mortgage crisis. Trump did not inherit an economy mired in crisis, of course; he inherited what was, at the time, the strongest economy in the world. That booming economy is no more: Goldman is now predicting higher inflation and slower growth than it had previously forecast, while its forecast for Europe is now stronger than it had been.

  Trump has always been a dodgy salesman more than anything, telling supporters what they want to hear. He insisted that the strong economy under former president Joe Biden was, in fact, a disaster that only he could fix. In October, Trump told attendees at a rally: “We will begin a new era of soaring incomes. Skyrocketing wealth. Millions and millions of new jobs and a booming middle class. We are going to boom like we’ve never boomed before.”

  That sales pitch got Trump away from the criminal cases against him and back into the White House. Now, though, he needs to make the sales pitch fit into a reality that it doesn’t match.
  …
  According to MarketWatch, this is the worst start to a presidential term since 2009, when the country was in the subprime mortgage crisis. Trump did not inherit an economy mired in crisis, of course; he inherited what was, at the time, the strongest economy in the world. That booming economy is no more: Goldman is now predicting higher inflation and slower growth than it had previously forecast, while its forecast for Europe is now stronger than it had been.

  Trump has always been a dodgy salesman more than anything, telling supporters what they want to hear. He insisted that the strong economy under former president Joe Biden was, in fact, a disaster that only he could fix. In October, Trump told attendees at a rally: “We will begin a new era of soaring incomes. Skyrocketing wealth. Millions and millions of new jobs and a booming middle class. We are going to boom like we’ve never boomed before.”

  That sales pitch got Trump away from the criminal cases against him and back into the White House. Now, though, he needs to make the sales pitch fit into a reality that it doesn’t match.
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• The universities are next
  Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.

  Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.

  Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)

  Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.

  Then go after the universities.

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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 8, 2025
  Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made it clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to slash the federal government and to privatize its current services. …

  Bessent’s comments reveal that the White House is beginning to feel the pressure of the unpopularity of its policies. Trump’s rejection of 80 years of U.S. foreign policy in order to prop up Russia’s Vladimir Putin has left many Americans as well as allies aghast. Trump’s claims that Putin wants peace were belied when Russia launched massive strikes at Ukraine as soon as Trump stopped sharing intelligence with Ukrainian forces that enabled them to shoot down incoming fire.

  The administration’s dramatic—and likely illegal and unconstitutional—cuts are infuriating Americans who did not expect Trump to reorder the American government so completely. While billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump repeatedly say they are cutting only “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the government, that insistence appears to be rhetorical rather than backed by fact. And yesterday, new cuts appeared to continue the gutting of government services that generally appear to be important to Americans’ health, safety, and economic security.
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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 7, 2025
  Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.
  …
  The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.

  On March 7, 1965, sixty years ago today, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 6, 2025
  This morning, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters reported that the Trump administration is preparing to deport the 240,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and have temporary legal status in the United States. Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova reminded Americans that “these people had to be completely financially independent, pay tax, pay all fees (around $2K) and have an affidavit from an American person to even come here.”

  “This has nothing to do with strategic necessity or geopolitics,” Russia specialist Tom Nichols posted. “This is just cruelty to show [Russian president Vladimir] Putin he has a new American ally.”

  The Trump administration’s turn away from traditional European alliances and toward Russia will have profound effects on U.S. standing in the world

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• The biggest Ponzi scheme in history

  Friends,

  I remain optimistic about the longer term, but I still awaken each morning with a sense of dread. I’m sure some of you do, too.

  Start with Elon Musk’s bonkers comment that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

  In a Ponzi scheme, a con artist lures investors into a fake investment project, pockets the cash, and then gets new “investors” to funnel their cash to the earlier investors — until there are no new recruits and the whole thing collapses. The last ones in are suckers left holding worthless bags.

  Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It’s a high-functioning, universal, and exceptionally efficient part of the American social safety net — the opposite of a Ponzi scheme. Which is why the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose cutting it.

  Social Security is a simple “pay as you go” program. Current workers, via the payroll tax, fund payouts for retirees and disabled people. In 2024, about 1 in 5 U.S. residents received Social Security.

  I used to be a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. I know what I’m talking about.

  As the Social Security Administration explains, “In 2025, when you work, about 85 cents of every Social Security tax dollar you pay goes to a trust fund. This fund pays monthly benefits to current retirees and their families and to surviving spouses and children of workers who have died. About 15 cents goes to a trust fund that pays benefits to people with disabilities and their families.”

  The only reason that the Social Security trust fund is slowly running out of money is the trustees never anticipated that so much of the nation’s total income would be in the hands of so few people (such as Elon Musk).

  The simple way to fix this is to lift the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes, which is now $176,100.

  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg fulfilled their 2025 Social Security payroll tax obligations a few minutes past midnight on January 1. Most Americans continue paying payroll taxes all year.
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• Supreme Court rules Trump administration must unfreeze foreign aid payments
  The court ruled 5-4 the administration must comply with a lower court order.

  A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration must comply with a district court order and pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance funds to nonprofit aid groups for work already completed on the government’s behalf.

  Supreme Court Refuses to Save Trump in Quest to Demolish USAID
  The Supreme Court has denied Donald Trump’s emergency bid to cancel billions in USAID funding already approved by Congress.

  Hundreds of State Dept. Officials Sign Dissent Cable Urging Rubio to Stop Killing USAID
  The letter, obtained by The Bulwark, is a remarkable eleventh-hour attempt to save the beleaguered agency.

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