How the anti-Trump backlash is growing

04 April

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during an event to sign an executive order to shut down the Department of Education, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 20, 2025.

In many ways this was another horrific week. Like a terrible hurricane, the Trump dictatorship is sweeping more people into its maw while further destroying our public institutions and wrecking what’s left of our civil norms.

Yet this week also featured 11 reasons for modest optimism:

1. Wisconsin Supreme Court vote

Despite Elon Musk’s hysterical warnings, cheesehead preening, and more than $20 million spent by the Republican in the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court — much of it by Musk — it didn’t matter: Liberal judge Susan Crawford won by a remarkable 10 points, securing the court’s liberal majority. A state that narrowly backed Trump in 2024 swung sharply away. Every county in Wisconsin shifted to the left in this race compared to the 2024 presidential race.

Not only did Judge Crawford pile up huge margins in Milwaukee and Madison, but she kept those of her opponent, Brad Schimel, down in Milwaukee’s predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs, where the abortion issue doubtless moved some Republican women to cross over and vote for her.

Wisconsin voters recoiled at the odor of Musk. At one point, Crawford referred to Schimel as “Elon Schimel.” That said it all.

Elon is proving to be a huge political liability. Trump says Musk is leaving the regime in a few weeks but I have my doubts.

2. Other races

In other down-ballot races, Democrats saw success on Tuesday.

Democrats won the other statewide races in Wisconsin. For state superintendent of public instruction, incumbent Jill Underly, who was backed by unions and Democrats, defended her seat comfortably against a GOP-backed challenger who supported school vouchers. Wisconsin Democrats also dislodged an incumbent county executive in light-red Winnebago County, and Illinois Dems flipped the mayoralty in the city of Aurora.

In Florida, Republicans defended two congressional seats — but by much tighter margins than in November. Democrats in both districts campaigned against the DOGE cuts to Social Security/Medicaid/VA. These two districts were so red that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not even consider investing campaign funds.

If you apply the shifts in Florida across the House battlefield in 2026, Democrats would be on track to flip over 40 seats and easily retake the majority.

In another major upset, voters in Aurora, Illinois, ousted their Trump-aligned mayor, Richard Irvin, and elected city councillor and community labor activist John Laesch as their next mayor.

What should really concern Republicans is that this growing rejection of Trump took hold even before he lowered the boom on the economy with his inflation-blowing tariffs. “[I] think that these elections are going to be proxies, or almost like weather devices for figuring out what kind of storm we’re going to be up against next year,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned fellow Republicans.

3. Nationwide, an ever-stronger rejection of Trump

What happened in Wisconsin and Florida reflects something that’s happening nationwide. Trump is doing far more to mobilize his opponents than to rally his supporters. Here are this week’s poll numbers (again, all polls conducted before Trump’s wildly irresponsible tariffs).

Reuters/Ipsos done between 3/30 and 4/1: Trump has 43% approval, 53% disapproval — the lowest approval since his return to office

YouGov/Economist poll done between 3/30 and 4/1: Trump has 46% approval, 49% disapproval — lower approval than Biden’s at this point in his term

Marquette Law poll done between 3/17 and 3/27: Trump has 46% approval, 54% disapproval

Morning Consult poll done between 3/28 and 3/30: Trump has 47% approval, 50% disapproval

4. Town halls are terrible for Republicans

Indiana Republican Representative Victoria Spartz was booed and scolded by constituents at two town halls this week, over Signalgate, deportations, and DOGE cuts.

Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert held a telephone town hall this week but still faced tough questions about Musk/DOGE, Medicaid, and SNAP cuts.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to hold town halls in GOP districts where Republican incumbents are unwilling to hold them. Republican Representative John James wouldn’t meet with voters in his district, so Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Maxwell Frost went to James’s Michigan district last Saturday to hold a town hall meeting with James’s constituents instead.

5. Democrats are fired up (finally)

No wonder Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) have become heroes far beyond the party’s progressive wing and have drawn such enormous crowds for their anti-Trump, anti-oligarchy rallies. The next stop on their tour against oligarchy will be Los Angeles on April 12.

Tomorrow’s nationwide April 5 “Hands Off” day of action also promises to be a big one.

The conventional wisdom had been that Trump’s opponents are less mobilized than we were at a comparable point in his first term back in 2017. In fact, the opposite is true. A study released last month by the Crowd Counting Consortium found “more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.” The researchers concluded “that resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”

Democratic Senator Cory Booker spoke against Trump on the Senate floor for 25 hours and five minutes this week without sitting or exiting the Senate chambers to eat or use a bathroom, thereby breaking by nearly an hour the previous record set 68 years ago. He streamed the speech live on TikTok, where it garnered more than 400 million “likes.” The truly remarkable aspect of his speech was that it was a speech — not a venom-filled rant, but a substantive and thoughtful address to the nation.

Kudos to Senator Booker for reminding us of the importance of speaking out for what we believe and demonstrating America at its best. Meanwhile, Trump and his regime are demonstrating America at its worst: cruel, inhumane, and greedy.

6. Tesla continues to plummet

Meanwhile, Elon is the worst sales rep Tesla and its shareholders could ever imagine. We learned this week that Tesla’s global sales in the first quarter fell 13 percent from a year earlier, largely due to a worldwide consumer backlash against the role that Musk is playing in the Trump administration. After Musk endorsed far-right parties, Tesla sales plunged in Germany by 41.5 percent compared to last year; they were down in France by 41 percent; and down in the UK 0.6 percent

Oh, and Democratic lawmakers in New York state introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed at Musk and the so-called Buffalo Billion project, in which the state spent $959 million to build and equip a plant that Musk’s company leases for $1 a year to operate a solar panel and auto component factory. The bill would determine whether Tesla was meeting job creation targets, making promised investments, paying enough rent, and honoring job training commitments. If not in compliance, the state could claw back state benefits from Tesla, impose penalties, and terminate contracts.

7. Paul Weiss and Skadden are paying a price for selling out to Trump

The disgraced elite law firms Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps — both of which capitulated to Trump to avoid executive orders that could have crippled their businesses — are already paying a price. The firms’ associates are saying both privately and openly that their leaders betrayed their firms’ principles with deals that undermine a commitment to provide free legal work to public interest groups and causes at odds with the White House. A few have quit their jobs. Many aspiring young lawyers are boycotting the two firms. Good!

8. Trump’s tariffs cause utter chaos

I’m including Trump’s bonkers tariffs as a reason for modest optimism even though many in the United States and around the world will be terribly harmed by them, but the tariffs will smooth the way for Trump to be booted out of office — in 2028 or sooner.

Those tariffs are likely to be the worst economic policy since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which worsened the Great Depression. They will cost the typical American family at least $4,000 this year, fuel inflation, and very possibly wreck the economy.

Stock and bond markets have plunged in reaction. The Wall Street Journal estimates that $2.7 trillion of the value of American corporations has already disappeared as a result of the tariffs. Many big corporations are planning layoffs.

Other nations will surely raise their tariffs on American exports or even block certain American services in retaliation.

9. Trump has lost his Senate majority (at least on tariffs against Canada, which may be a harbinger of more Senate votes against him)

The Senate voted 51-48 Wednesday to undo President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada — delivering its first major rebuke to Trump since his return to the White House.

Four Republicans — Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Rand Paul (Kentucky) — defied Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune by voting with Democrats to invalidate a national emergency that Trump declared in February, allowing him to impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. “Unlike Mexico and China, Canada is not complicit in this crisis,” Collins said.

The resolution’s supporters have described it as a way to send a message to Trump about the broad discontent with his tariff strategy, even if the measure has no chance of becoming law. (Trump has vowed to veto the bill, even if it makes it through the Republican-controlled House.)

In addition, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassleyintroduced legislation (with Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell) to claw back Congress’s tariff power. The bill would force levies to be approved by Congress and allow them to end the tariffs.

10. Trump’s abductions

My tenth reason for modest optimism is also a tragedy in the making, but it’s stirring up so much public antipathy toward Trump and his incompetent cronies that I’m listing it.

Earlier this week, Trump officials admitted they had made an “administrative error” in abducting a Maryland man whose wife and child are both American citizens and sending him to a notorious Salvadoran prison — despite a court order that he could remain in the United States because he might face torture in El Salvador. The prison where he is now being held, known as CECOT, has long had a reputation for its brutal conditions.

To make matters worse, the Trump regime says it has “no power” to get him out of that El Salvador prison.

This is horrific but it’s also a cause for modest optimism because Americans are beginning to see Trump’s tyranny for what it is. Forcible abductions off the streets and from their homes of people n the United States whom the Trump regime only accuses of being dangerous foreign nationals — without oversight by a neutral trial court — opens the way for the “disappearance” of anyone the regime dislikes. This is what dictators do. It is not something America does — at least not until Trump,

11. Trump’s attack on Social Security is beginning to harm beneficiaries

Let me end today’s list with another horror show that’s about to harm millions of Americans but will almost certainly hasten the end of Trump’s reign of terror (if not also the end of the Republican Party).

Social Security is now engulfed in the worst crisis of its history. That’s not because it’s running out of money or because of fraud or high administrative costs. This crisis is entirely the doing of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

More than 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s staff have been pushed out, and Trump has announced plans to fire nearly half of the total Social Security workforce.

The result so far: Social Security field offices are being shut down. Hold times for customer service phone calls are over 2 to 3 hours. The Social Security website crashed four times in 10 days.

I once served as a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. I know how critical this program is to the 73 million Americans who rely on it. They will not abide this raid on a program to which they’ve contributed throughout their working lives.

***

By listing these reasons for modest optimism this week, I don’t mean to imply we are in good shape. To the contrary, the scourge of Trump is worsening.

My purpose in bringing you this list is so you know that despite Trump’s tyranny, the resistance to him is wide and deep — and it continues to build. That’s partly your doing, for which I send you my heartfelt thanks.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."

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