Radical redesign plans: City headwind: Where is the resistance to Trump?

Hundreds of thousands of people on the street alone in the US capital Washington, several million across the country. That was eight years ago, shortly after Donald Trump became President of the United States for the first time. On the weekend before his second inauguration, opponents call for a similar protest. But the response is lean. Some thousands protest in Washington. Even three weeks after Trump began to change the state apparatus and put democracy to the test again, there is no mass protest. Where is he – the resistance to the Republican and his radical plans? Doesn’t it exist, or does he just look different in 2025?

In the weeks after Trump’s election victory in November, the words shock or paralysis were often heard. Trump had clearly beat Harris’s democratic opponent Kamala, there was no doubt about that. The Republican won not only in all seven swing states in which a particularly scarce race was predicted. He was also the first Republican since George W. Bush 2004, who received the absolute majority of the votes cast. In the United States, this is not decisive for victory due to the complex electoral system – but Trump derives a mandate to turn the USA upside down according to its ideas.

However, as Trump likes to say, his election success was not a landslide victory. Trump won 49.8 percent of the votes cast, Harris 48.3 percent. The United States is quite split in its ideas in what the future of the country should look like. Nevertheless, Trump’s clear result should have taken the wind out of his sails. But now the Republican is sitting in the White House and shaking the foundations of the rule of law. He has pardoned convicted violent offenders of the Capitol Sturm and other criminals, harassed the authorities, proceeds against minorities or disregarded the congress.

Who reacts how – an overview:

Trump’s approval values ​​are still solid and better than at the beginning of his first term. And so far there has been no sign of mass protests in the United States. So who is stirring – and who doesn’t?

Civil society: Of course, there are also demonstrations against Trump’s politics in the United States – although not with the same visual punch as during Trump’s first term. Churches and volunteers support migrants without a residence permit to which deportation threatens. Civil rights organizations proceed legally against Trump’s project. And yet, the columnist Ross Barkan summarizes it in the “New York Times Magazine”: “Die Linke – who looks up after eight years of resistance to Trump and finds that he is a share in every presidential election actually expanded – now adapts new. ” The old debate about Trump’s normalization is dead, the Republican is treated like an ordinary president. The Democrats: According to Harris’ defeat, the Democratic Party is there without any recognizable leadership and a clear course. Some Democrats protested in Washington with shit federal officials who have tried to target the democratic congress tips Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries with a symbolic draft law without the prospect of success to target the clearing policy of tech billionaire and Trump friend Elon Musk, but many of the democratic Sizes are strikingly reserved. It almost seems as if nobody wanted to be too loud too early – long before the intermediate elections in 2026 or even the race for the presidential candidacy. And the party should not have forgotten what was largely responsible for their defeat: the consumer prices that skyrocketed under Joe Biden in the White House. Warnings of the end of democracy seemed to move people less than their wallet. This is also why some Democrats should now rather talk about high egg prices than about Musk. The Republicans: Not much has to be said. The party is iron behind Trump. The Republicans have learned: Anyone who stands against Trump will pay a high price for this. Anyone who looks up, for example in the Senate votes on Trump’s candidates for their government team, either has nothing to lose or nothing more to report.

The “Washington Post” summarizes it as follows: “In the second Trump era, many activists who have been released from a feeling of exhaustion and senselessness are withdrawn from the loud street protests that shaped Trump’s first term.” The congress is also a frustrating undertaking for the Democrats – there they have a minority in both chambers. So was that?

Fight against Trump in court

No, you can’t say it that way – because this time the protest may simply look different, according to the newspaper. There is a whole wave of complaints against Trump’s decrees and Musk’s brutal approach to the authorities. Annex, applications and hearings do not produce any impressive images, but they have an effect. A court in Boston just rejected an application from unions to stop Trump’s program for mass severance payments. But a number of measures were temporarily stopped with temporary orders. Trump and his team are foxing that judges step on the brakes, they accuse them of abuse of power and activism.

Certainly, some of the lawsuits will run in the sand – and a number of things should go through the instances and finally end up in front of the Supreme US court. There Trump moved the majorities far to the right during his first term. Often, but not always, the Supreme Court has decided in his sense in recent years. However, the real question should be whether Trump accepts the decisions of the judiciary at all. At the latest a disregard for the judicial violence would then probably have to drive people back on the street.