A progressive nonprofit has unveiled an action plan for revving up political organizing on the left and resisting former President Trump’s agenda during his second term.
“If there’s one universally accepted truth in the modern age, it’s that sequels suck. And Trump 2.0 will be no exception,” the group Indivisible wrote in its “Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink.”
Indivisible, which spawned when former congressional staffers released a viral organizing guide after Trump’s first election in 2016, launched its new blueprint last week on a call with 31,000 attendees, organizers said.
The gameplan includes picking “strategic fights to drive national backlash” against Project 2025 to help propel Democrats to wins in the 2026 midterm elections, and playing “hardball” against “MAGA policies” wherever Democrats hold local, city or state office, according to a release.
It’s “a time-limited plan to make it to 2026,” trying to block and check policies from the incoming Trump era. Though blue wins in the midterms “won’t guarantee democracy is safe in the long-term,” the guide reads, “it gives us a shot.”
The guide envisions a big role for blue states as a pushback against the GOP’s incoming trifecta of control in Washington, something Democratic governors and state attorneys general have already been signaling.
In California, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) office said he and state lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” the Golden State’s laws, and he called a special session of the state legislature to protect progressive policies. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) told The Hill last week that his office has been readying for a second Trump term for months, monitoring comments from Trump and his inner circle and scrutinizing the conservative Project 2025 blueprint.
Other Democratic state leaders have signaled they’ll push back against Trump’s plans for mass deportations and defend reproductive rights in their states.
The Indivisible guide’s focus on 2026 comes as the lawmakers elected that year will be the people in charge of administering the election in 2028, the guide notes. Democrats will want to both claw back seats in Congress and keep “MAGA fanatics or election deniers” from taking office to protect the transfer of power in 2028.
The president-elect notably floated the prospect of seeking a third term, which is barred under the Constitution, in an apparent joke to House Republicans last week.
“I don’t know what’s going to come. I know a lot of damage is going to be done. I’m not telling you everything is going to be ok – nobody can tell you that,” Indivisible’s co-founder and co-executive director Ezra Levin said on the guide’s launch call, per a release. “But what I can tell you is that we do still live in a representative democracy. Trump is not all powerful. We have power at the federal level, at the state level, at the city level.”
Indivisible is among several progressive groups that are already kicking their organizing efforts into high gear as Trump readies to take the White House in January, including MoveOn, Public Citizen and the Working Families Party. These groups and others say they re joining forces to build Democratic coalitions and get ready for the midterm elections.
