When President Trump swept back into office, his dejected opponents watched as his return was greeted not with mass resistance but with a sense of resignation.
Protesters stayed home. Corporations and executives rushed to curry favor. Even some Democrats made overtures to Mr. Trump, as he and his allies boasted that they had popular opinion on their side.
But just over 100 days into his second term, seeds of dissent to Mr. Trump’s agenda, governing style and expansion of executive power have grown in fits and starts across the country. The opposition is sturdier than it once appeared.
Demonstrations have increased in size and frequency. Town halls have become unruly and combative, pushing many Republican lawmakers to avoid facing voters altogether. And collective efforts by universities, nonprofit groups, unions and even some law firms have slowly started to push back against the administration.
“There is a momentum developing,” said Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who first ran for office in 2018 because of his revulsion to Mr. Trump’s first term. “Now, I feel like there are people standing up and speaking out and taking up and seeing that this is the right thing to do, that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
A national movement has not yet flowered: The opposition lacks a leader, a central message or shared goals beyond a rejection of Mr. Trump. Even as some Democrats become more aggressive, their deeply unpopular party is struggling to articulate a unified line of attack — or much of a strategy at all, apart from hoping the president’s approval ratings continue to fall.
Vanita Gupta, who was associate attorney general during the Biden administration, said Democrats in Congress were largely following, rather than leading, the opposition to Mr. Trump.
“There was a feeling of despair early on that he had all the levers and nobody was standing up, but that momentum has changed,” she said. “People may not understand what members of Congress are doing, but lawyers, advocates and regular people are challenging the administration.”
Still, many of Mr. Trump’s opponents worry that what is happening is not nearly enough to stop what they fear is a slide toward authoritarianism.
“We seem to be facing the destruction of the United States,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and an expert on fascism. “I don’t see anyone articulating that this is an attack on what it means to be American, on the very idea of America, and it’s an emergency.”
Combat in the Courts
Mr. Trump is still barreling ahead. He has reshaped foreign and domestic policy, threatened open defiance of the courts, ripped apart the federal government and retaliated against perceived enemies.
White House aides dismissed the opposition against him as coming from Democrats and “superficial paid ‘detractors.’”
“They are losing everywhere, and they will never match the organic enthusiasm behind his movement,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman. “While Democrats throw attacks at the wall to see what sticks, President Trump is quickly delivering on his campaign promises with over 140 executive orders to date.”
Those orders are being met with a historic flood of lawsuits, more than 350 in all. As of this week, at least 123 court rulings have paused some of the administration’s moves, according to a New York Times analysis.
“You’re seeing the courts really hold as a front line in the rule of law,” said Skye Perryman, the chief executive of Democracy Forward, a liberal-leaning legal group that has filed 59 challenges to the Trump administration.
The plaintiffs, Ms. Perryman said, include public school districts, religious groups, small-business owners, doctors and even Republicans fired by the president. The pushback, she said, “is transcending typical politics.”
Beyond the courts, Mr. Trump’s opponents have limited options. Republicans control Congress and have abandoned their role as a check on Mr. Trump. Democrats have full power over just 15 state governments, versus 23 for Republicans.
Unlike in Mr. Trump’s first term, he is now using his official powers to reach deep into American life and culture, targeting universities, law firms, nonprofit groups and broadcast networks.
His divide-and-conquer strategy has won key successes: Some targets, including top law firms and Columbia University, have given in to his demands. Others, like the Democratic fund-raising platform ActBlue, have been consumed by chaos.
But sectors that fear being targeted have begun pursuing a more collective approach. Nonprofit groups and charitable foundations have formed organizations to share best practices for legal defense and protecting their finances. More than 400 higher education leaders have signed a letter condemning “political interference” in universities.
“The people who are going to lead the next steps in the resistance movement and opposition to Trump are not the ones trying to get the band back together from 2017,” said Cole Leiter, the executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, a new group of progressive organizations and labor unions opposing Mr. Trump. “We are setting up new coalitions.”
Colleges grew much more willing to oppose Mr. Trump openly after Harvard sued his administration, according to Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University.
“At first, I think everybody was pretty shocked at the scale and the rapidity of this assault on basic American freedoms,” he said. “Now, I think people don’t want to be left off that list. They don’t want be seen as collaborators with authoritarianism.”
A Newly Skeptical Public
Mr. Trump’s aggressive pursuit of his agenda has come at a political cost.
Polls show that his approval rating is historically low for a president so early in a term, with majorities of voters saying he has “gone too far” and is overreaching with his powers. Some of the frustration is also economic: His ever-shifting tariffs have raised expectations of a recession and tanked consumer confidence. And in Wisconsin, conservatives were dealt a major defeat in a court election.
His administration’s actions are also trickling into personal areas of voters’ lives.
Dr. Susan J. Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Mr. Trump’s far-reaching spending cuts and proposals were having an extraordinary effect on children, their parents and the country’s pediatric system.
Fears of a government-led autism registry have also made some families more reluctant to attend doctors’ appointments, she said. Others are worried that their children’s mental health care plans could be threatened. And as the country confronts deadly measles cases, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, is serving as health secretary.
“What we’re seeing in the exam room is that every single appointment is taking longer because parents are confused and anxious,” Dr. Kressly said. “There’s a degree of anxiety, and that’s overlying even what used to be straightforward well-child visits.”
Democrats Who Want to ‘Play Hardball’
Democrats have yet to capitalize fully on those worries. But in recent days, several candidates in competitive races have toughened their language against the president, reflecting liberal voters’ desire for a fight.
Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, a Democrat who faces re-election next year, said at a town hall last Friday that the president’s conduct “has already exceeded any prior standard for impeachment.” Three days later, Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat running for governor of New Jersey, wrote in an opinion essay that Democrats must “play hardball” and “disrupt norms and institutions” to combat Mr. Trump.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s most recent nominee for vice president, noted that no single Democrat was championing the resistance to Mr. Trump.
“The desire for leadership is a natural human thing, but I think people are leading this,” he said. “I don’t think any one person can actually do it right now. It’s pretty difficult to lead the party.”
Mr. Walz predicted without a hint of humor that Mr. Trump would soon begin dressing in a military uniform and said it was “only a matter of time” before he arrested a Democratic political rival.
Asked if he saw himself at risk, Mr. Walz said, “It wouldn’t surprise me.”
Voters Who Want ‘Results’
But other Democrats say their constituents increasingly want more from liberal leaders than simply opposing the administration.
“If I just woke up every day as mayor to protest Donald Trump, I would not get re-elected,” said Mayor Justin M. Bibb of Cleveland, the head of the Democratic Mayors Association, who said his city was struggling to respond to tariffs and cuts to federal grants. “People don’t give a damn if I’m protesting every day. They want to see me deliver results.”
The real-world effects of Mr. Trump’s moves are still being processed by many Americans.
Last Sunday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, about 30 parishioners gathered for a session to help process their collective grief over what the president had done to their lives. They shared stories about losing their jobs and watching their life’s work be dismantled by a hostile administration.
Julie Murphy, a parent coach who helped lead the session, said that while it took place three blocks from the Capitol, where many of the parishioners have worked, it could have been held anywhere in America.
“The response is coming,” she said. “It is empowering to think that I am not alone.”
