Don't lose hope
Robert Reich for Inequality Media
If you are experiencing rage and despair about what is happening in America and the world right now because of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime, you are hardly alone. A groundswell of opposition is growing—not as loud and boisterous as the resistance to Tump 1.0, but just as, if not more, committed to ending the scourge.
Here’s a partial summary—10 reasons for modest optimism.
1. Boycotts Are Taking Hold
Americans are changing shopping habits in a backlash against
corporations that have shifted their public policies to align with Trump.
Millions are pledging to halt discretionary spending for 24
hours on February 28 in protest against major retailers—chiefly Amazon,
Walmart, and Best Buy—for scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion
initiatives in response to President Donald
Trump.
Four out of 10 Americans have already shifted their spending over the last few months to be more consistent with their moral views, according to the Harris poll. (Far more Democrats—50%—are changing their spending habits compared with Republicans—41%.)
Calls to boycott Tesla apparently are having an effect.
After a disappointing 2024, Tesla sales declined
further in January. In California, a key market for Tesla, nearly 12% fewer Teslas
were registered in January 2025 than in January 2024. An analysis by Electrek points
to even more trouble for Tesla in Europe, where Tesla sales have dropped in
every market.
X users are shifting over to Bluesky at a rapid rate, even
as Musk adds more advertisers to his ongoing lawsuit against those that have
justifiably boycotted X after he turned it into a cesspool of lies and hate
(this week, he added Lego, Nestle, Tyson Foods, and Shell).
2. International Resistance Is Rising
Canada has helped lead the way: A grassroots boycott of
American products and tourism is underway there. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
has in effect become a “wartime prime minister” as he stands up to Trump’s
bullying.
Jean Chrétien, who served as prime minister of Canada from
1993 to 2003, is urging Canada to join with leaders in Denmark, Panama, and
Mexico, as well as with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to
fight back against Trump’s threats.
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is standing up to
Trump. She has defended not just Mexico but also the sovereignty of Latin
American countries Trump has threatened and insulted.
In the wake of JD Vance’s offensive speech at the Munich
security conference last week, European democracies are standing
together—condemning his speech and making it clear they will support Ukraine
and never capitulate to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Trump has done.
3. Independent and Alternative Media Are Growing
Trump and Elon Musk’s “shock and awe” strategy was premised
on their control of all major information outlets—not just Fox News and
its right-wing imitators but the mainstream corporate media as well.
It hasn’t worked. The New York Times has
done sharp and accurate reporting on what’s happening. Even the non-editorial
side of The Wall Street Journal has shown some
gumption.
The biggest news, though, is the increasing role now being
played by independent and alternative media. Subscriptions have surged at Democracy
Now, The American Prospect, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic
Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor
Notes, The Lever, Popular
Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of
course, this and other Substacks.
As a result, although Trump and Musk continue to flood the
zone with lies, Americans aren’t as readily falling for their scams.
4. Musk’s Popularity Is Plunging
Elon Musk is underwater in public
opinion, according to polls published Wednesday.
Surveys by Quinnipiac University and Pew Research
Center—coming just after Trump and Musk were interviewed together by Fox
News’ Sean Hannity, with Trump calling Musk a “great guy” who “really cares
for the country”—show a growing majority of Americans holding an unfavorable
view of Musk.
In Pew’s findings, 54%
report disliking Musk compared to 42% with a positive view; 36% report a very unfavorable
view of Musk. Quinnipiac’s results show
55% believe Musk has too big a role in the government.
5. Musk’s Doge Is
Losing Credibility
On Monday, DOGE listed government contracts it has canceled,
claiming that they amount to some $16 billion in savings—itemized on a new “wall
of receipts” on its website.
Almost half were attributed to a single $8 billion contract
for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency—but that contract was for
$8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published
on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.
In addition, Musk and Trump say tens of millions of “dead people”
may be receiving fraudulent Social Security payments from the government. The
table Musk shared on social media over
the weekend showed about 20 million people in the Social Security
Administration’s database over the age of 100 and with no known death.
But as the agency’s inspector general found in 2023, “almost none” of them were receiving
payments; most had died before the advent of electronic records.
These kinds of rudimentary errors are destroying DOGE’s
credibility and causing even more to question allowing Musk’s muskrats
unfettered access to personal data on Americans.
6. The Federal Courts Are Hitting Back
So far, at least 74 lawsuits have been filed by state
attorneys general, nonprofits, and unions against the Trump regime. And at
least 17 judges—including several appointed by Republicans—already have issued
orders blocking or temporarily halting actions by the Trump regime.
The blocking orders include Trump initiatives to restrict
birthright citizenship, suspend or cut off domestic and foreign U.S. spending,
shrink the federal workforce, oust independent agency heads, and roll back
legal protections and medical care for transgender adults and youths.
In other cases, the Trump regime has agreed to a pause to
give judges time to rule, another way that legal fights are forcing a slowdown.
7. Demonstrations Are on the Rise
We haven’t seen anything like the January 2017 Women’s
March, the day after Trump 1.0 began, but over the past weeks, demonstrations
have been increasing across the country. Last Monday, on Presidents Day,
demonstrators descended upon state capitol buildings.
In Washington, D.C., thousands gathered at the Capitol
Reflecting Pool, chanting “Where is Congress?” and urging members of Congress
to “Do your job!” despite nearly 40°F temperatures and 20-mile-per-hour wind
gusts.
The nationwide protests are part of the 50501 Movement,
which stands for “50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement.” One of its leaders,
Potus Black, urged the crowd of protesters in Washington to stand united in
order to “uphold the Constitution.”
To oppose tyranny is to stand behind democracy and remind
our elected officials that we, the people, are who they’re elected to serve,
not themselves. The events over the past month have been built to exhaust us,
to break our wills. But we are the American people. We will not break.
I expect that in the coming weeks and months protests will
grow larger and louder—and by summer perhaps a “Summer of Democracy” will sweep
the nation.
Acts of civil disobedience are also on the rise, as are
resignations in protest against the regime. This week, former NFL punter Chris Kluwe was hauled out of a
Huntington Beach City Council meeting after speaking out against Trump during
public comments against plans to include a MAGA reference in the design of a
library plaque.
As cheers erupted from the audience, Kluwe told the council,
in words that should be repeated across the land:
MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence.
MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book
bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing.
MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands
for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including
canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to
education, including for disabled children. MAGA is profoundly corrupt,
unmistakably anti-democracy, and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi
movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it
is.
When he was done speaking, Kluwe said he would “engage in
the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.”
8. Stock and Bond Markets Are Trembling
Trump has not lowered prices; in fact, inflation is rising
under his control.
Trump’s wild talk of 25% tariffs is spooking the market.
Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which measures the performance of
30 large-cap U.S. stocks, dropped by more than 1.40%.
Treasury bonds also dropped after a report showed more U.S. workers applied for
unemployment benefits last week than economists expected—an
indication the pace of layoffs could be worsening.
Transcripts of the last Fed meeting showed that
officials discussed how
Trump's proposed tariffs and mass deportations of migrants, as well as strong
consumer spending, could push inflation higher this year.
Economic storm clouds like these should be troubling for
everyone but especially for a regime that measures its success by stock and
bond markets.
9. Trump Is Overreaching—Pretending to Be “King” and
Abandoning Ukraine for Putin
Trump’s threats of annexation, conquest, and “unleashing
hell” have been exposed as farcical bluffs—and his displays this week of being
“king” and siding with Putin have unleashed a new level of public ridicule.
On Wednesday, following his attempt to kill a new congestion
pricing program for Manhattan, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING
IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” The
White House shared the quote
accompanied by a computer-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine
cover while donning a golden crown.
Negative reaction was swift and overwhelming. Social media
has exploded with derision. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “We are a nation of laws, not ruled
by a king.” Illinois’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, said, “My oath is to the Constitution of
our state and our nation. We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the
knee to one.”
The reaction to Trump’s abandoning Ukraine and siding with
Putin has been more devastating, putting congressional Republicans on the
defensive. Prominent Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and John
Kennedy of Louisiana criticized Putin. Bill Kristol, a
former official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, noted that
“Nato and the U.S. commitment to Europe has kept the European peace for 80
years. It’s foolish and reckless to put that at risk. And for what? To get
along with Putin?”
10. The Trump-Vance-Musk “Shock and Awe” Plan Is
Faltering
In all these ways and for all of these reasons, the regime’s
efforts to overwhelm us are failing.
Make no mistake: Trump, Vance, and Musk continue to be an
indiscriminate wrecking ball that has already caused major destruction and will
continue to weaken and isolate America. But their takeover has been slowed.
Their plan was based on doing so much, so fast that the rest
of us would give in to negativity and despair. They want a dictatorship built
on hopelessness and fear.
That may have been the case initially, but we can take
courage from the green shoots of rebellion now appearing across America and the
world.
As several of you have pointed out, successful resistance
movements maintain hope and a positive vision of the future, no matter how dark
the present.
More than 55 years ago, I participated in the resistance to
the Vietnam War—a resistance that ultimately ended the war and caused a once
powerful president to resign. That resistance gave us courage we didn’t even
know we had. It changed American culture, inspiring songs such as “The Times
They Are A Changing,” and “Blowin’ In The Wind.”
No one person led that anti-war movement. It was an amalgam
of groups and leaders spanning more than six years of mobilization and
organization, at all levels of society.
The civil rights movement that culminated in the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required over 18 years of
organizing, demonstrating, and mobilizing.
The current coup is less than five weeks old, and resistance
has only begun. The Trump-Vance-Musk regime will fail. Even so, the Democracy
Movement now emerging will require at least a decade, if not a generation, to
rebuild and strengthen what has been destroyed, and to fix the raging
inequalities, injustices, and corruption that led so many to vote for Trump for
a second time.
Those of you who want the leaders of the Democratic Party to
step up and be heard are right, of course. But political parties do not lead.
The anti-war movement and the Civil Rights Movement didn’t depend on the
Democratic Party for their successes. They depended on a mass mobilization of
all of us who accepted the responsibilities of being American.
We will prevail because we are relearning the basic truth—that we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.
© 2025 Robert Reich
Robert Reich is the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock" (2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good" (2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
