How to Fight Trump: Organizing for Socialist Resistance

Sarah Milner argues that Trump’s historic onslaught can be challenged, and socialists can contribute significantly to mass movements, such as the labor and immigrant rights movements, and through strategic electoral campaigns.

Sarah Milner is endorsed by her Reform & Revolution caucus to run for the NPC at the 2025 National Convention. She joined Portland DSA in 2018 during the Occupy ICE movement, helping to found and co-chair the YDSA chapter at Portland State University. She served two terms on the Portland DSA Steering Committee, and is now the Co-Chair of DSA’s National Communications Committee. In Portland, she helped establish the chapter’s endorsement policy and its Socialists in Office Committee. Sarah is a proud trans woman and helped form and lead DSA’s National Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Commission (TRBA) committee.

We’ve seen a range of attacks by Trump: on immigrants, trans people, and workers’ rights. This is a radical, right-wing administration. How would you analyze Trump, his presidency, and his MAGA movement?

The Trump administration is the most intense expression of a crisis that American politics has experienced for decades. It encompasses constant attacks on democratic rights, more overt attacks on workers, the destruction of public services, assaults on unions and immigrants, and international warmongering. What makes Trump an acute expression and, in some ways, a unique threat, is his mobilization of these forces into an aggressive, far-right, anti-democratic assault on workers. It is a movement that consciously aims to purge the left from American society.

This article is from the new book A User’s Guide to DSA: 5 Debates That Define the Democratic Socialists ($15, 460 pages, published by Labor Power Publications). A User’s Guide to DSA features original and often conflicting perspectives from the different tendencies on the front lines of building DSA – not as a social media flame war, but as a serious dialogue aimed at sharpening our strategy to build working-class power.

We can see this expression in many areas. The administration recently passed the “big beautiful bill,” a brutal set of legislation that includes everything from massive funding for ICE to carrying out its vicious deportation regime, to gutting public services for trans people, to attacks on federal worker unions, and to dismantling public services. It is an across-the-board attack on the working class. The Trump administration is the capitalists waging class war.

As socialists, we must recognize that the Trump administration represents all our enemies gathered in one administration, launching all the attacks they have dreamed about for decades.

It is no accident that the Trump administration uses attacks on immigrants and attacks on Palestine solidarity protests as a wedge for all these other attacks. It reflects how the imperial processes implemented abroad are a critical element of this broader capitalist project. Internally, the administration correctly recognizes that the attacks on immigrants and the genocide in Gaza are front lines of the class war. Socialists must recognize the fight to free Palestine and the fight to protect immigrants as our own front lines of this war.

In these respects, Trump represents the interests of the broader capitalist class – almost the uniform interests of the ruling class. We see how this works with Zohran’s campaign in New York City. When push comes to shove, all the different pro-capitalist forces are willing to oppose socialists.

What about the conflicts within the ruling class?

I think, in other areas, Trump represents only a particular fraction of the ruling class: reactionary intellectuals, evangelical zealots, extractive industries, wealthy people in more sparsely populated red states, and – especially in his 2024 run for president – a section of tech capitalists who swung toward him. In that sense, Trump reflects a wing of the ruling class that wants to become far more nativistic and aggressive toward China, focusing less on Atlanticist international commitments and more on the homegrown defense of the status quo.

This, in turn, inspires considerable pushback from liberals who, observing actions like tariffs or his vacillation on continued backing for Ukraine, perceive Trump as destroying or threatening to destroy the liberal international project.

But that assessment may not be entirely accurate. While Trump undeniably endangers liberal globalism, he also represents the culmination of many existing processes. The liberal international order planted the seeds for its own crisis.

While Trump reflects some divisions within the ruling class, one cannot rely on any of those anti-Trump elements in the bourgeoisie to effectively coordinate resistance against him. Even if they regain power, they will simply let another far right Republican replace them. Even in areas where his actions are disliked, he remains the logical outcome of their policies.

Many people describe Trump as a fascist. Is this an accurate description?

The nuanced answer is that Trump himself might personally choose a fascist party if one were available. Does he believe in fascist ideas in his head? Probably.

However, is the Trump administration fascist? No. What we see is an escalating development of the forces and trends necessary for fascist politics.

This escalation is not confined to Trump’s presidency; it’s something we also observe even when Democrats are in power. It’s not so much that there are conscious, ideological fascists trying to turn the American state into a fascist one. I’m sure there are some individuals like that in the Trump administration, but that’s not the driving force.

What’s happening is a sort of natural process of escalation, whereby – as the crises and problems facing the American state escalate – the polarization within the state increases. Power is centralized within the executive branch to circumvent that gridlock, a sense of emergency intensifies, and as it does, the space for those fascist policies is created.

But this is a process which began before Trump and will probably continue after him. You can look at George Bush with the Patriot Act and the illegal surveillance of Americans, or the stolen election in 2000. These are examples of dramatic escalations against existing democratic norms in the country.

Trump’s administration is not fascist, but Trump and MAGA represent a big step on the road towards the American state becoming something far more violent and even more dangerous.

How strong is this Trump? He wants to be a strongman – but what are the real forces for and against him?

To assess the strength of this government, what it takes to resist:

Compared to most presidents, Trump has a lot of power. As I outlined, there has been a longer process of centralizing enormous authority in the executive branch. In addition, he is a president who has all three branches of government, with a decisive right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. He has the authority of the military-industrial state, at least to some extent. And then on top of that, Trump this time is more familiar with the state.

The sort of wishy-washy people, the John McCains, the Jeff Flakes, the Bob Corkers of the Republican Party, are all gone. This is a party much more of Trump loyalists.

On the other hand, many liberals made a serious analytical error when they treated Trump’s election as a decisive affirmation of Trumpism. Trump won against a very unpopular incumbent administration that ran a chaotic and self-destructive campaign in a period of terrible cost of living increases. And Trump won relatively narrowly.

And this is reflected most of all in the narrow majority of the Republicans in the House, where they’re consistently struggling to pass bills. What we as socialists can draw from this is that Trump is in a strong position. He has a lot of power. There’s no denying this. And that is really attributable to the disaster of the Biden administration in many ways.

But Trump is not unbeatable.

Popular pressure has forced Trump to back down on certain policies. When senators under popular pressure visited El Salvador, the administration was forced to reverse course and allow Kilmar Albrego Garcia back into the US.

Mahmud Khalil was recently released from jail, at least for now. This is a major victory. He was one of the most prominent political prisoners in the country.

The courts have placed stays on Trump’s policies. For example, recently their attempt to bar trans people from being able to change their passports was placed on hold.

And so I don’t think this is all to say that we’ll somehow be magically saved from Trump, but the lesson here is: through the power of mass movement and popular pressure, it is actually possible to impact this administration.

There is a huge responsibility for socialists and for the institutions of the organized working class to try to provide that popular pressure, to try to force that kind of effective resistance. What we have seen is that the most effective way to oppose Trump is with mass movements of millions of people in the streets, with clear popular demands highlighting the most extreme overreaches of the administration.

The MAGA movement is full of contradictions. Trump’s coalition is full of contradictions. So just as it would be an error to underestimate the danger of Trump, it is an error to overestimate the strength of Trump.

How would you analyze Trump’s coalition and his MAGA movement?

Trump won a decisive victory in 2024. It was by relatively small margins, but he also won the popular vote, which was crushing to the Democratic party and the liberal self-conception of their party as sort of reflecting a perpetual majority. Trump’s political movement, we see its base in the upper class, in the wealthy people and billionaires, in the classic Republican coalition, Fox News types, the Koch brothers. It emerges from that existing right-wing milieu.

But something Trump added to this coalition was a lot of support among poorer or downwardly mobile people. And in 2024, he also expanded his numbers among voters of color, among young voters, young men in particular.

He won ground in urban areas. He won ground in historically blue states.

That reflects the total failure of the Democratic Party, which had the opportunity to strike major blows against Trumpism – and didn’t.

And it also represents a contradictory success for the MAGA movement. Trump was able to expand his base by promising a return to the good old days of his first term with low interest rates, with a relatively stable pre-Covid economy, and with politics that were, as hard as it may be to imagine, slightly less escalated than they were now.

This is a hollow nostalgia to run on, nostalgia for an already nostalgic movement from five or six years ago. We’ve begun seeing that many of these gains are unstable, and the sort of same old tired strategy of the Democratic party probably can’t win these voters back, or if it does, it will only do it hesitatingly. It will lose them again.

One thing Zohran Mamdani did – that was effective – is he went out and talked to people who voted for Trump. He tried to articulate an alternative vision for how the government can work on behalf of the kind of people who voted for Trump in a place like New York. And come the primary, Zohran gained a lot in many of these areas that swung towards Trump.

That brings us to the contradictions within the MAGA coalition. If we look at the question of US wars around the globe. I’m always hesitant when Republicans claim to be anti-war. A lot of times what they really mean by that is they actually want to focus on war with China instead of other wars, potentially. But I do think there are many voters who voted for Trump, because they were fed up with the war in Ukraine, fed up with the war in Gaza, or just fed up with what seemed like a failing foreign policy generally.

And they might not be coherent anti-war voters, but they were voting against a political system. And then we saw Trump escalating the war with Iran. He’s continuing to back Netanyahu. With a mass movement with clear demands that appeal broadly to people, especially workers, on the basis of their class interests, I believe we can fracture meaningful parts of this coalition.

I believe we can mobilize people who have been demobilized in previous elections to protest and rally against the Trump administration. Our base will of course be leftists who have always opposed Trump. But socialists, the anti-war, anti-imperialist movements, and the labor movement or any of these mass resistance movements – they do not need to forfeit the possibility of winning over large numbers of people. We are living through a moment where millions of people are rethinking deeply held ideas. If we have the right approach, organizations like DSA can be a catalyst for many of those people changing their opinions in a far more radical direction.

Trump’s majority is by no means stable, but the responsibility will fall to the people willing to fight to fracture that majority and create a different force in the US.

Regarding these movements to increase this pressure, to build the resistance: So far, looking at the mobilizations on April 5 and June 14, they are very liberal, often super close to the Democratic Party.

These protest movements have had a mixed and confused consciousness.

A classic example of the kind of vibe at these protests – I heard this report from people around the country – is that side by side you’ll have American flags and Palestine flags flying, and people will not really have a sense of the contradiction. Or there would be signs trying to defend the US support for Ukraine, through NATO and with the US’s imperialist agenda, and “Free Palestine” on the same sign.

It’s a very mixed, muddled, confused, nascent, early consciousness, and it doesn’t have a clear direction or leadership right now.

What role does DSA play in all that?

Unfortunately, in DSA right now, we are paralyzed in our engagement with wider movements.

There is a majority to vote down orientations to more aggressive, hard-left radical protests, and then there is also a majority to vote down orientations to more confused or Democratic-affiliated liberal protests.

In both cases, it’s wrong to not engage.

Socialists should join these protests, but on a clear basis, articulating our own politics with our own materials, our own message, our own banners, our own signs. In many cases, we will find that we’re one of the only forces open for people to join and consistently mobilize with after the protests.

So I’m glad to hear that DSA chapters across the country have been joining these protests, but I absolutely think the NPC can do a much better job proactively assisting members to join and mobilize for these protests, offering chapters leading material, banners, support, talking points. Socialists should be out there, and we should be trying to meet people where they are and talk to them about socialism.

And there is an openness for socialist ideas. Compared to eight years ago, it took much longer for the resistance to build toward mass protests. It felt for weeks more like being on the defense. However, the Zohran campaign shows that people have a lot of energy and desire to raise their horizons, to present something different, to offer a different vision of politics.

And the Democratic Party has failed to do that. The socialist movement and the left have an obligation to try that, so that it can be done.

What we see with this energy in these protest movements is a potential for a foundation. But it’s all going to melt away unless it has an organization, demands, structure, and clear direction that people start getting organized into. And so there’s potential to go on the offensive.

Zohran’s victory shows this. Some of the more successful mobilizations have shown this. But it is a responsibility for DSA to adopt an ambitious, mass campaigning approach that seeks to capture this moment, to rise to the occasion and to provide this sort of catalyzing leadership.

There are all these thousands, maybe millions, of people looking for a political alternative, and the mainstream of the Democratic Party isn’t offering it. And we can at least be a big part of that alternative.

Even on immigration – a core question of Trump’s propaganda and program – we see resistance and cracks in his support. We had neighborhoods fighting back against ICE in Los Angeles. What is the potential of future movements?

Trump is trying to use ICE as his sort of violent enforcer. They’re his administration’s thugs. The goal is to brutally discipline some of the most vulnerable parts of the working class and of the left into silence. And the reality is, despite having on-paper approval for these actions, Trump overstepped. He overstepped with these violent raids, with deporting legal residents, with some of these high-profile attacks. And even though many Democrats wanted to back down, many ordinary people wanted to stand up and fight.

I would not be surprised if what we saw in Los Angeles happens elsewhere. It should inspire us as socialists.

It represents a genuine attempt by ordinary people to find a way to fight back against these attacks.

Now, what I would say is there is an enormous responsibility in these resistance movements for organized labor. Those of us in the union movement have a responsibility to step into these struggles and to help try to give them a voice and give them direction.

If organized labor really dedicates ourselves to fighting for immigrants, that has the potential to be a decisive force swinging the struggle. As a small example, in my own union local, NALC Branch 82, we passed a local resolution committing our local to fighting for provisions to protect migrants from ICE raids in our upcoming contract. Now, that’s just a very small example. The scale of the struggle will need to be much bigger.

But socialists in the labor movement and socialists in the immigrant rights movement should try to fuse these struggles and bring together the power of the organized working class to help solidify, strengthen and arm these protests against ICE.

How do you see the role of organized labor so far in the resistance against Trump?

We’ve been put on the back foot in many ways. We had the beginnings of an upsurge under Biden, but we’ve suffered serious setbacks under Trump.

Faced with this nativism and this nationalism, organized labor has been paralyzed to some extent.

We saw Sean O’Brien, whose election – backed by a union reform movement – was a major step forward within the Teamsters. But then what has he done? He was cozying up to the Trump administration.

Even Shawn Fain, president of the UAW and also elected with the support of a reform movement, probably one of the best union leaders in the country, was sort of equivocating and lacking a clear stance on the tariffs.

So it’s not simply that we have this challenge of labor leaders failing to galvanize and organize the movement. Unions have generally been caught a bit paralyzed. And there have been people who wanted to retreat or strike a compromise with the administration, and people who wanted to fight back but didn’t know how, and people who wanted to keep their heads low, and all these things have become mixed together.

And – again – there’s this lack of coherent organization or plans or action, let alone demands and mobilization. The result has been devastating, especially for federal workers. We have seen scores of federal workers fired or stripped of basic protections and rights, and consistently organized labor has failed to provide sufficient response.

What does all that mean for DSA?

DSA has an incredible opportunity and responsibility at this moment. We are living through a moment when not only thousands or tens of thousands, but millions of people are changing their understanding of politics. You can see it everywhere. You can see it in your schools or workplaces.

People are beginning to question ideas they’ve held for years, and there’s no telling how this will go. Many people are frustrated with the Trump administration, but many people just wrapped up being frustrated with the Biden administration, too.

In this moment, socialists can cut through with bold, ambitious, forward-facing messaging, unified around a clear socialist program, grounded in a strong orientation towards mass work, but on a principled basis. That’s a long way of saying we can go out and talk to people about our ideas and convince them. We can run socialist candidates and win.

We can organize protests and bring hundreds or thousands of people into the street. We can talk to our coworkers and build up reform caucuses. We can mobilize people, and we can not only make gains for DSA, but also for the working class, and meaningfully push back against Trump.

But to do that, we will have to collectively step up our work, our coordination, and our organization.

Right now, DSA is caught in this pattern, where we tend to be reactive to major events. Something happens, then we respond. We know Trump will attack workers. We can often tell days, weeks, or months in advance what some of those attacks will be. And we have a responsibility to begin proactively planning and arming our chapters with resources, materials, talking points, supplies, banners, flyers, posters, training, equipping our organization to expand with fundraising emails, mass calls, recruitment emails.

We need to be prepared to meet these moments as they come, and we need to dedicate ourselves to a long-term strategy of breaking away from the Democratic Party and building our own independent political force.

The 2026 elections will present an enormous opportunity to begin doing exactly that.

The Zohran campaign showed that people are itching for a political alternative, and we have now years of experience running campaigns. We are in a stronger place than we were during the first upsurge in 2016. Even though maybe people are less exhilarated by socialism as a term in some ways, maybe we don’t have as many liberals chasing after our endorsement, but we know so much more than we did. We have experience. We have members with years of experience running campaigns, creating graphics, running door-knocking, mobilizing members.

We know, for example, how to build up Socialists In Office committees, how to talk and relate to elected officials in office, how to collect data, and how to advertise for candidates.

There is all this wealth of information and experience we have, and all of this opportunity from the hundreds of thousands of people potentially looking for a radical alternative to the more moribund leadership of the Democratic Party.

We need an ambitious strategy, which means, among other things, being willing to run candidates for higher office. Again, Zohran’s campaign shows people are excited and energized by the idea of someone actually having the power to change their lives.

In 2026, we should run people for Congress. Where it strategically makes sense, we should be willing to run candidates outside the Democratic Party. For example, in nonpartisan elections, in big cities like Portland, there’s no reason to run as Democrats. Instead, we can begin building up our own alternative political brand. In deep red seats, there is an opportunity for socialists to run independent political campaigns. In some deep blue seats, there may be opportunities. In states with fusion voting, there are opportunities to build separate ballot lines. And this isn’t just about the question of what name is next to us on the ballot line. It’s more broadly about the question of: Do we establish political independence? Do we establish an independent brand, an independent style of organizing, an independent strategy in office?

This is why it’s vital that as we fight for these electoral gains, we need to do so on a principled basis. Socialists who are running for office should be clearly critical of the Democratic Party. They should distinguish themselves by talking about DSA. They should be committed to helping build DSA.

This year’s National Electoral Committee consensus resolution for the DSA Convention in August 2025 says endorsed candidates should support the policies in the “Workers Deserve More” program. That is a good step forward. Although ideally, I would like them grounded in a clear program, like the one MUG and R&R have proposed to that Convention.

Generally, we should be running candidates not just to win an election, although winning elections is important. We should run to win, but we should run to win and use those offices as a platform, as a pulpit, to mobilize and organize the working class.

In 2026, DSA can run a slate of candidates who are running clearly and openly as socialists, and we can include a number of strategic independent or third-party candidates on that slate, as well as candidates running in Democratic races where it makes sense.

Should we endorse candidates who do not meet the standard of sticking to our program? For example, should we endorse Rashida Tlaib?

My proposal does not exclude endorsement of others. But then we need a conscious, explicit process to do so.

My caucus, R&R, proposed a resolution to the Convention. It unfortunately didn’t meet the signature threshold, but it would’ve clarified the endorsement process to say that the NPC is empowered to carry out endorsements of candidates who don’t meet all standards. The NPC is already empowered to do that, but our resolution would have clarified those standards to say that it would need a two-thirds threshold of the NPC. The NPC would need to be generally unified on that point, and the NPC would need to not only hand-wave away the standards, but also articulate clearly which part of the standards the candidate wasn’t meeting, and why we thought it was worthwhile to endorse them anyway.

So for example, with Rashida Tlaib, I think it would make sense to endorse Rashida Tlaib. However, as we sought to endorse Rashida Tlaib, we have a responsibility to be clear to our members that – as incredible as she is, and I think she’s the best person in Congress – there are limitations to Rashida’s approach. There’s no sense in papering over that, especially if we want to avoid getting ourselves in another Jamaal Bowman or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez situation. Some of their past actions concerning Israel and Palestine deviated so significantly from our program that our relationship was severely strained, leading the DSA to distance itself from them.

So, we should strategically support candidates who advance our political cause, even if they don’t meet all these standards, but we have to do it on a clear, principled and open basis. We can’t kind of slide those differences under the rug and hope they don’t become a problem.

The Palestine solidarity movement saw some ups and downs over the last years. Given the horrors of what’s happening daily in Gaza, it is clear that this work needs to continue and grow much stronger. What should DSA and the broader movement do to meet the needs of the moment?

It makes sense that people are feeling desperate around Palestine organizing. Every time you turn on the news, you see a new horrible slaughter. Now, Israeli troops are massacring Palestinians at food aid sites. It’s one of the greatest crimes I’ve ever lived through. However, that horror, the scale of the crime we are seeing committed, forces us to an even greater responsibility for sharp and effective organizing. We have an incredible responsibility here as socialists in the United States. Our government provides billions of dollars in funds, weapons and aid to Israel.

DSA has seen some major wins on this front over the past year, and they help point forward for how we can struggle. Some examples:

In Portland, we organized protests outside Intel, a computer company that had ties to Israeli military projects. And as we protested, we began to convince workers within Intel and they started supporting us, and that allowed us to get one of the biggest BDS wins in the struggle so far. Intel eventually backed down and cut their contract. That reflects the power of protest movements convincing workers of these struggles.

Another example I would draw from Portland is a Beaverton city councilor, Tammy Carpenter, who is a DSA member. Tammy was under attack for her solidarity with Palestine, and she faced a political investigation against her for speaking up for Palestine. We organized dozens of socialists and workers to attend a mass rally at the school board, clearly articulated our disagreement with this policy, and stood up for our elected official.

I point to these two examples because they show a way forward. We didn’t back down, for example, on the articulation of “Free Palestine” or the necessity of ending the genocide and the apartheid with mass movements. We need to go out there and proactively convince people who aren’t already mobilized.

It is a positive step forward to organize a fight within the labor movement for an arms embargo. That’s also on the agenda of the DSA National Convention. If we are going to end the genocide, we will have to build up a mass movement for an arms embargo against Israel.

We have to be clear about what it will take to accomplish this. It will take a far more aggressive and coherent mobilization of DSA members in the organized labor movement and coordination among chapters than any such campaign we’ve put forward before. It will take us to directly contact, talk to, train, and mobilize our members. It will take us to build wide coalitions, including with people who we find disagreeable. It will take us to be clearly focused on our demands, while not dropping our socialist horizon, and being sort of battered into a retreat. And it will take sustained pressure and focus of a sort that our organization has historically struggled with.

However, I think there are some optimistic signs. Zohran faced floods of money, calling him an antisemite, attacking him, criticizing him for his position on Israel. And while he maybe didn’t have the perfect articulation on this topic, by and large, he struck a clear, strong tone on the question and he was able to win. He was able to defeat those attacks.

When I went to New York City to canvas for Zohran, I was on a street corner in Bed-Stuy, and I talked to probably 150 or more people. Not one of them brought up the attacks on Zohran over alleged antisemitism. People focused on things like the cost of living.

Within the Palestine solidarity movement, socialists should clearly advocate for a single democratic, secular, socialist state. We need to fight for the right to return for Palestinians, an end to apartheid, and for equality and freedom in this land of Palestine. We need to be willing to articulate this clearly and defend this position. I’m glad there’s a resolution proposed to the DSA Convention, but I don’t think we can water down this position. I don’t think we can drop our demands for democracy and secularism, and I don’t think we can equivocate on our advocacy for a free Palestine.

The Trump administration brutally targets trans people. So far, the resistance on this issue was relatively limited. Why?

Speaking from personal experience, this is an absolutely terrifying time to be trans, and it feels like everybody has spent a couple of years debating whether to abandon us or not. And it has profoundly materially impacted my life and the lives of people I know.

One of the things that I appreciate about DSA is that it is a political space and political home that is actually dedicated to liberation, and I consistently advocated for that and organized for that. I was proud to be one of the co-chairs of the trans rights and bodily autonomy campaign last year.

It has been difficult to organize a fight back for several reasons. We are a small and deeply vilified minority that is being targeted, because there aren’t a lot of us, and they can kind of make an example of us.

There are not many trans people publicly represented in the media or with newspaper columns to even speak up for ourselves. And then, it’s really hard to build protest movements of any real size when you’re fighting for your life.

At least here in Portland, we’ve seen a real upsurge of grassroots local mutual aid organizing. And that shows that there is a spirit of solidarity within the community that can be mobilized for people. But by and large, there is no consistent awareness of the threats we face or a consistent sense of urgency on the question.

There is a particular responsibility for DSA members who aren’t trans to use our socialist understanding of these kinds of struggles, to stand up for us and to fight to galvanize the labor movement, our electoral campaigns or popular protests, to not forget or leave behind trans people.

In terms of mass fight back and resistance, the strongest ground on which to fight for trans rights is firmly embedding the fight for trans rights in the broader fight for democracy and bodily autonomy. While the things that happen to people like me might be a relatively rare experience, the broader question of having your healthcare taken away, having your rights taken away, having your boss treat you bad at work, of needing your union to stand up for you, of having people tell you what to do, how to look, where to go or how to live, those are things that everybody goes through.

And the attacks on trans rights are merely the sharp end of the wedge of the attacks on everybody. As socialists, we have a responsibility to ensure that trans rights remain at the forefront of these movements and are tied into these broader political struggles, so that people understand that attacks on trans rights are ultimately attacks on the whole working class.

With Trump’s program of “drill, baby, drill,” a lot of the limited progress we’ve made over the last decades is lost. The dangers grow, the time we have decreases. How could we bring back this issue as a mobilizing and organizing issue?

Probably the most serious failure of socialists in the Biden administration is the way we kind of allowed climate justice to fall out of popular engagement. And what we have seen is that the climate crisis has accelerated, while our horizons have fallen further.

Now, the Green New Deal looks like even more of a long shot than when it was first proposed. Meanwhile, the solutions we need are even bigger and more intense. Socialists need to try our best to recapture the spirit of mass popular mobilization for climate policies that can provide immediate positive benefits to people’s lives: demands like free public transit, a mass jobs program to retrofit and modernize American industry, like building trains and infrastructure across the country.

This can be part of a bold socialist platform for 2028, but the immediate challenge of people not being super engaged by this, unfortunately, is something that will be overcome through experience.

The climate crisis is just going to get worse and worse whether or not people are talking about it. This challenge isn’t going to go away. Socialists need to be prepared with a clear platform for a radical transformation of society. And we need to fight for it across the board in our elections, in unions, in popular protests.

I don’t think we can summon the political conditions for that movement from scratch, but we can prepare ourselves so that as that movement inevitably reemerges, we can fight to lead it and guide it towards a class-struggle eco-socialism.

The resistance against Trump is also harder, as there is a lot of fear out there. Fear of repression, fear of deportations, fear of retaliations at universities and workplaces.

There are many fears about political repression and saying the wrong things under the Trump administration, and that makes sense. It’s scary, and it shows why we can’t be flippant about our language and analysis.

DSA needs to be firmly focused on organizing for mass politics. We need to be coherently messaging in a way that clearly communicates our ideas to people.

But simultaneously, we can’t back down from our ideas. It is a dangerous time, but we can’t get caught in sort of a frantic retreat. We need to trust our members to engage openly in democratic processes. We need to create membership-wide forums. We need to provide suggested talking points to members. We need to publicize debates, and we need to engage openly and fight for these ideas.

It is tough to balance possible repression with simultaneously having a democracy and a mass focus. But the only way DSA can thrive in this period is if we have a vibrant internal democracy and political leadership ready to keep us focused squarely on articulating our vision outwards towards the masses.