Finally, a Trump Opposition?
Up against a far worse assault on government and the basic components of democracy than in 2017, an opposition force to Donald Trump and Elon Musk may be cohering.

A protester holds a sign opposing Elon Musk at a demonstration in Los Angeles, California, on January 31, 2025. (Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
At a rainy protest in front of Senator Chuck Schumer’s office in midtown Manhattan Thursday, the target could be identified by the chants: “Elon Musk has got to go.” Organized by Indivisible, a volunteer-driven group of progressive Democrats and part of a larger nationwide effort to pressure senators, especially Democrats, to do more to stop Musk, an unelected billionaire, and his unauthorized interference with the very operations of government — probably unprecedented for a private citizen whose specific job in the administration has never been approved by Congress.
After an eerie silence during the first weeks of the second Trump administration, something like “the resistance” feels like it’s slowly coming back to life. And while we are in its earliest days, the effort seems more focused and politically mature, more informed by an understanding that oligarchy is the main enemy of the American people. Gone, thankfully, are the “pussy hats,” the childish name-calling (remember “Orange Man” and “Drumpf”?), and the paranoid anti-Russia conspiracy theories.
This pushback, though so far smaller in scale than at this time during Donald Trump’s first term, has been targeted and savvy in calling attention to the administration’s worst appointments and in its focus on Musk. Jacobin readers might roll their eyes at liberal groups like Indivisible, but they are the ones doing the work of opposition right now. And they’re not letting Democrats off the hook.