USA under Donald Trump | Protests in the USA: Between Outcry and Agony

"I've never experienced anything like this," says 67-year-old Michael Welch of Montclair, New Jersey. Every Fourth of July, Welch walks down the street to wave to the parade-goers. But "this is the first time we've been provoked. This can't end well," he shakes his head.

For the first time, the local Republican Party, which usually consists of a handful of people, paraded through with an oversized float. "Make Montclair Great Again" reads a banner. Behind it walks a grinning man in a tie, waving a flag reading "Trump 2028." The provocation is met with fierce opposition in Montclair, which traditionally votes Democratic. "No Trump, no kings, no Nazis," shouts a middle-aged woman. Two young men block the flag-bearer's path, one of whom snatches the flag from him and hurls it to the ground.

But the Trumpist isn't deterred. After a brief shove, the two boys leave, and the man grabs his flag and continues waving it. "It's unbelievable what Republicans have dared to do these days," complains Michael Welch. A political provocation on the street in the middle of a small town dominated by Democrats on Independence Day – no one here can remember anything like it.

The scene in Montclair was not an isolated incident. Similar tensions clashed across the country on July 4, as protests against the Trump administration erupted in hundreds of cities. The day coincided with the signing of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill." The law further destroys the leaky social safety net. It reallocates money to support Trump's most controversial projects, such as massively increasing funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is responsible for many of the deportations, some of which are brutal. In hundreds of places, even where Republicans dominate, people voiced their discontent on Independence Day. This was special because Independence Day is normally celebrated non-politically. The Democratic Party has adhered to this. Its reaction to date has been rather reserved in the face of authoritarian government restructuring, while grassroots movements often take to the streets in anger.

»No Kings« demos a turning point

The July protests were just the latest climax of a movement that had already made history weeks earlier with the "No Kings" demonstrations on June 14 – Trump's 79th birthday. The protests took place across the United States. An estimated 10 million people gathered in more than 2,300 towns. Social scientist Branco Marketic described June 14 as a "watershed moment" in the left-wing magazine "Jacobin."

The opposition's period of depression, which has lasted since Trump's election victory in November 2024, is thus over. This is demonstrated not only by the sheer number of demonstrators, but also by their reach. The protests were by no means limited to large, densely populated cities; they also reached deep into Trump territory . Even where Republican supporters threatened violence, demonstrators were not intimidated, such as in Florida, Texas, or Alaska.

Since the "Big Beautiful Bill" is one of the most unpopular laws in US history, Democrats hope that Republicans will be punished in the upcoming midterm elections.

This peak on June 14 was preceded by extensive grassroots mobilizations independent of the Democratic Party. It began with an internet group called "50501," an acronym for the original idea of ​​organizing 50 protests in 50 states on one day. The idea was developed on the internet platform Reddit a few days after Trump's inauguration at the end of January.

72,000 people participated in the first protest in early February, and slightly more participated in the second in the middle of the month ("Not My Presidents Day"). The action group then cooperated with "Political Revolution," a group founded in 2016 for Bernie Sanders' campaign. Members of the movement helped organize the "Hands Off" protests on April 5, 2025. These had already taken place in 1,200 locations. According to estimates, more than 5 million Americans participated. A similar number of people took to the streets two weeks later, on April 19, and – with smaller participation – on May 1. Then came the preliminary climax of the protests: "No Kings" Day.

Indivisible pulls the strings

But this success wasn't spontaneous—it was the result of years of organizing. A driving force behind this nationwide mobilization is Indivisible, a grassroots movement with a central office in Washington and now thousands of branches in cities and towns across the US. The organization was founded nine years ago, shortly after Trump's first election victory.

The married couple Ezra Levine and Leah Greenberg worked for disaffected members of Congress. They had co-authored a paper in which they recommended that progressive politicians adopt some of the tactics of the far-right Tea Party movement, which had once exerted massive pressure to shift the Republican Party to the right. They argued that this strategy should be applied to the Democrats and influenced their own members of Congress. Indivisible's voice is now being heard; it has become a mainstay of the opposition.

In an email newsletter following the successful "No Kings" mobilization on June 14, the initiative called for the development of a "broad-based movement to counter Trump's agenda." With donations pouring in since "No Kings" Day, one million people will be trained as movement organizers to pressure Democratic incumbents to oppose Trump's policies, rather than capitulate to them.

In their weekly online conferences, which take place every Thursday, Levine and Greenberg advocate for a campaign focused on civil disobedience against the ICE agency, which they describe as the American "Gestapo." Their reasoning: The drastic austerity program in Congress's latest tax bill would not take effect until after next year's midterm elections, but the $37.5 billion in funding for ICE and the repressive state apparatus are already making themselves felt. There's no time for a long wait for a possible Democratic victory in the midterm elections in 16 months.

Hesitant Democrats

This impatience stands in sharp contrast to the stance of the Democratic Party leadership, which is sticking to a standstill strategy, even as this is causing growing unrest among the grassroots. Since the "Big Beautiful Bill" is one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation in US history, the party hopes that Republicans will be punished in the upcoming midterm elections. "Republicans will lose their majority in 2026, and this big, ugly bill will be the reason," states an internal party memorandum.

This self-soothing fits with the much-discussed dictum of former Clinton advisor James Carville. In February, he warned Democrats in the New York Times against a confrontational approach to Trump and called for a "tactical pause" to expose the internal divisions within the Republican Party. Without a leader and without power in government or parliament, it would be strategically wiser for the Democrats to remain silent – ​​"roll over and play dead," Carville said seriously.

But not all Democrats are willing to accept this passivity. Criticism of their own party is growing increasingly louder – fueled in part by a debate sparked by a bestseller. Why can't Democrat-governed cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco get their housing problems under control? asks the widely discussed book "Abundance," which tops the New York Times bestseller list.

Authors Ezra Klein and Terek Thompson call for a shift away from state regulation toward a "productive" state that ensures "abundance": more housing, infrastructure, energy, and state capacity to act. Progressive politics must no longer focus solely on fighting distributional battles, but also expand supply—build more, produce more, enable more.

The left's criticism: Klein and Thompson's argument is technocratic and blind to class and power. What's the point of "building more" if the housing is built for the market? What's the point of more green energy if only corporations benefit? Low-income households would benefit nothing from it. And what does "abundance" mean in a country where millions lack access to healthcare or a living wage? These fundamental questions are driving the Democrats' strategic debate.

Walid Shahid, who co-leads the progressive opposition within the Democratic Party and advises left-wing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, aptly wrote about the abundance debate in the magazine "The Nation": left-wing populism without power is theater. Technocracy without redistribution is capitulation. "The former merely diagnoses the crisis. The latter provides tools that no one can use." The Democrats must combine both: calling the destroyers of democracy by name and seizing power to stop them. Otherwise, the party won't solve problems, but will merely manage its own decline.