Trump Has a Plan—Now Democrats May Finally Have One Too

A week ago, I turned in my latest contribution to FrameLab. It argued that Donald Trump had a massive advantage over Democrats: a plan.

Admittedly, it’s a terrible plan—especially if you care about freedom, vulnerable Americans, and any institution in this country devoted to excellence. But it is a plan, while Democrats were still consumed with an internal debate over whether they should even appear dead or alive.

But fortunately, my argument became outdated over the last week. So we crumpled it up.

Proof of life

Since the middle of April, Harvard University stepped up, refusing to bow to Trump's demands. Senator Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador and wound up on every Sunday show arguing for fundamental freedoms. Even four of the six Republicans on the Supreme Court seem to have woken up a bit to the peril of this moment, which every day feels more and more like the colonists rousing themselves to the threat of King George III precisely 250 years ago.

Finally, some establishment Democrats and the institutions that make up civil society have figured out the wisdom of a quote often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin: “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

And we must hang together in numbers too large to ignore. That’s the only feasible plan.

'C’mon, Trump has no plan!' Unfortunately, he does

Fans of Dr. George Lakoff know Republicans have had a clear agenda driving the corporate capture of America for over 50 years. The Trump 2.0 plan builds on that with a Frankenstein’s monster of at least three dark, authoritarian visions of America.

You have the old-school GOP’s extra-extreme Project 2025, the wild secessionist and accelerationist ambitions of the Tech Fascists in the Nerd Reich, and Trump’s lust to provoke China and all of our allies with an intentional economic shock. By entwining these three plots against America, Trump had created a ruthless and massively resourced coalition.

This alliance allowed him to propel the country toward authoritarianism in his first 50 days, with few or no checks from Republicans in Congress or the Supreme Court. And he was doing so at a speed that surprised even people who had followed politics extremely closely since the darkest days of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Why Now?

That surprise helps explain why there was no evidence of any plan among the Democratic establishment to rein in Trump. Then, the week before the symbolic rebirth of Easter, when two irresistible forces made the path forward undeniable:

Average Americans stood up all winter, which inspired their leaders. While Democrats in the Senate have calculated that making too big a stand could backfire, the people refused to roll over and play dead. In numbers bigger than the response to the first Trump regime, they showed up at Tesla dealerships, at the polls in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, and by the millions for “Hands Off” protests.
Trump can’t help remind the world why limiting and then removing his power is the only feasible response to an insatiable lust for domination. It’s easy to forget already how close Trump came to crashing the global economy a couple of weeks ago, until he was convinced to head fake and pause some of his tariffs for 90 days while still escalating his trade war against China. But the threat of a dollar crisis that could be even worse than the 2008 financial meltdown remains. “You have a system that works unless volatility goes above a certain level,” researcher Nathan Tankus recently told Paul Krugman. “Donald Trump is the perfect thing to give a heart attack to the system because he is volatility encapsulated.” Trump’s willingness—nay, eagerness—to crash the stock market and the global economy shook many of those who believed that selling out their freedom was a good deal for the economic goodies the regime was promising corporate backers.

But it was perhaps the scene in the Oval Office last Monday with El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele that likely woke the Roberts Court up.

The two presidents made a spectacle of his flouting of a 9-0 ruling calling for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and Trump continually insinuated that he wanted to expand his lawless exile to foreign gulags to include American citizens. Suddenly, the threat Donald Trump presents to each of us became impossible to ignore.

Trump’s insatiable lust for domination has reminded everyone why this man had to be removed from the White House in the wake of a failed insurrection. And the resistance to this regime has inspired a virtuous circle of opposition that finally seems prepared to take on Trump’s intolerable acts.

What’s the plan?

Building a movement of at least 3.5% of this country, or about 11.6 million Americans, ready to rise at a key moment requires a new approach, as even David Brooks has figured out.

We also have to recognize that institutions and parts of society that should be standing up right now have either been co-opted by the regime (like labor unions or law firms) or effectively chilled (like student protesters) by the political elite.That means we have to go beyond politics as usual and break into culture, which, as Steve Bannon famously noted, is upstream from politics.

So what do we do? We reach out at Coachella, like Bernie Sanders did. Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, like the #TeslaTakedown, blurs the lines between festival and politics.

During a recent ceremony for the Breakthrough Prize, which rewards innovations in science, actor Seth Rogen called out Silicon Valley for its support of Trump and Elon Musk. Event organizers cut Rogen's comments from a recording of the event, but this only ensured that more people learned of his comments.

Anything that gives people the combination of anger and hope is essential right now, as we build protest and non-cooperation efforts equal to the fascist threat we face.

As Trump blunders, The People rise

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been reminded of two undeniable truths: Trump must be stopped, and bravery is contagious.

Trump’s got his plans. And, now, we’ve got ours. We must inspire each other more every day and do our best to limit the damage this regime exists to inflict.

This is a guest post from FrameLab contributor Jason Sattler. Jason is LOLGOP on BlueSky and pretty much any other social media platform. His writing has appeared in USA TODAY, Wired.com, the New York Daily News and Alternet.