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Opinion
10 Crucial Things You Can Do to Take On Trump in 2026
We will get through this, and we will prevail. But it will require confidence, courage, and tenacity.
Jan 01, 2026
Friends,
Trump 2.0’s second year may be even worse than the first. That’s because President Donald Trump, his sycophants, and the billionaires behind him know that with the coming midterm elections, 2026 could be their last unconstrained chance to suppress democracy and siphon off America’s wealth for themselves.
So, what can you do? Here are the 10 most important actions you can take in 2026:
1. Protect vulnerable immigrant communities.
This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accelerates its brutal roundups, detentions, and deportations, many hardworking and long-standing members of our communities and their families are endangered and understandably frightened.
ICE is arresting immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, healthcare sites, shelters, and relief centers—thereby deterring families from sending their kids to school or getting help they need, and threatening the health and well-being of entire communities.
What can you do? Join with others in a voluntary effort to alert vulnerable people in your community to where ICE is. Check in with local and state officials to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others to keep ICE away from hospitals, schools, courts, and shelters.
Meanwhile, order these red cards from Immigrant Legal Resource Center and make them available in and around your community: Red Cards | Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC. You might also find these of use: Immigration Preparedness Toolkit | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC.
2. Protect LGBTQ+ members of your community.
Trump continues to make life far more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other people through executive orders, changes in laws, alterations in civil rights laws, changes in how such laws are enforced, and encouragement of bigotry and hate.
Work with others in being vigilant against prejudice and bigotry, wherever it might break out. When you see or hear it, call it out. Join with others to stop it. If you trust your local city officials, get them involved. If you trust your local police, alert them as well.
3. Demand that your Democratic and Independent senators block Trump nominations, require quorum calls, object to unanimous consent, and keep the public aware of the terrible things Trump and his regime are doing. Urge your Democratic and Independent House members to be loud and vocal, to cause good trouble, and to vote against all Republican initiatives.
Tiny Republican margins in both chambers give Democrats and Independents enormous power, if they stick together. Make sure your Democratic and Independent members of Congress know you’re counting on them to do so. [The phone number of the Capitol switchboard operator is (202) 224-3121.]
4. In November’s midterms, help Democrats and Independents take back control of Congress.
This is crucial. Compliant, corrupt, and cowardly Republicans in the House and Senate have enabled Trump and the people around him—Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and JD Vance—to harm tens of millions of people. It’s vitally important that they’re booted out when the midterms are held in November and that they become the minority starting in January 2027.
Watch for open seats or retirements in close districts, using sites like GovTrack.us and Cook Political Report.
A good canvassing app for organizing is Reach.vote (also see here), providing means for letting supporters engage their personal networks via text/calls from their phones.
To connect with your local Indivisible group, start by visiting the Indivisible website to use their group map and find chapters in your congressional district, then find local events and actions on Mobilize.
5. Make the upcoming 250th anniversary of America about our duties to the Constitution and the world rather than loyalty to Trump or nativist bullshit.
Trump and his sycophants want to make the 250th about loyalty to Trump and to white Christian nationalism.
Don’t let them. Say it loudly and clearly: America’s challenge isn’t that we’re losing our whiteness or dominant religion or that too many foreigners are coming here. Our real challenge is preserving the ideals of democracy, the rule of law, equal justice, voting rights and civil rights, and social justice.
The 250th will be an opportunity for us to emphasize that “patriotism” has little to do with flag salutes or national anthems; it’s about what we owe one another: taking a fair share of the burdens of keeping the nation going. Paying taxes rather than lobbying for lower taxes, refraining from large political contributions that corrupt democracy, blowing the whistle on abuses of power, volunteering time and energy to improve our communities, and rebuilding our democracy.
6. Join with others to take progressive initiatives in your community and state.
Local and state governments retain significant power. Join groups that are moving your city or state forward on climate change, human rights, and voting rights, and counteracting the power of large corporations, in contrast to regressive moves at the federal level.
Lobby, instigate, organize, and fundraise for progressive legislators. Support progressive leaders. Again, Indivisible is a good source of information; you can find your nearest Indivisible group here.
7. Demonstrate against Trump’s tyranny.
The two No Kings protests in 2025 were important—revealing the depth and breadth of the resistance across America, reassuring millions of Americans that they aren’t alone and aren’t crazy, encouraging millions more to join the resistance.
More than 7 million of us marched in the second No Kings protest on October 18. It was enough to rattle Trump (who posted an AI-generated cartoon of himself defecating on the marchers). And it put us within reach of the 3.5% of a population researchers have found to be a precursor for overthrowing a tyrant.
This year, help make our protests even larger and their effects even greater.
8. Organize or participate in boycotts of companies that are enabling the Trump regime and/or treating their workers like sh*t.
Never underestimate the effectiveness of consumer boycotts. Corporations invest heavily in their brand names and the goodwill associated with them. Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock.
What to boycott? Start with Elon Musk’s X, Tesla, and Starlink internet service. Also: Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks, and any companies that advertise on X or Fox News.
Support unions by joining picket lines, encouraging employees to organize in places you patronize, and boycotting anti-worker firms. Encourage union pension funds to divest stock in corporations that are enabling or encouraging the regime (especially Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, Meta, and Amazon).
Here’s a good source.
9. To the extent you are able, fund groups that are litigating against Trump.
In 2025, the district courts and courts of appeals held the line against many Trump initiatives. In 2026, they’re likely to be even more important. (You can track the federal cases against the Trump regime here.)
The best groups spearheading federal litigation deserve your support. They include these:
American Civil Liberties Union has brought numerous civil liberties cases against the Trump regime, including those related to public health and immigration policies.
Earthjustice has filed several lawsuits over environmental regulations and funding freezes.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has been at the forefront of lawsuits against Trump for conflicts of interest, corruption, and ethical violations.
Natural Resources Defense Council has used litigation against Trump’s regressive climate policies.
Democracy Forward has mounted important legal challenges against Trump’s trampling of voting rights and the Constitution.
Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal have filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders seeking to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Public Citizen and Common Cause have challenged actions related to Trump’s moves against voting rights and equal opportunity.
10. Spread the truth.
Get news through reliable sources, and spread it. If you hear anyone repeating lies and Trump propaganda, including local media, contradict them with the truth.
Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, The Bulwark, More Perfect Union, Matt Stoller, and Mehdi Hasan.
And, of course, this Substack.
In addition to these 10 actions, please ALSO be sure to:
— Take care of yourself and your loved ones.
Don’t become so obsessed by what Trump and his sycophants are doing that you neglect your own well-being. It’s important that you take time for yourself, read a good book, or watch an absorbing TV series. See friends. Meditate. Take long walks. Find something to laugh at every day.
And hold your loved ones tight.
We will get through this, and we will prevail. But it will require confidence, courage, and tenacity. We need to stay healthy for this fight. We need to be fortified by those we care about. And we need to be there for those we love.
— Keep the faith.
Do not give up on America. Do not fall into the traps of cynicism and defeatism.
Remember, Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 points, and even then, it was a scant plurality rather than a majority. By any historical measure, this was a squeaker.
America has deep problems, to be sure. Which is why we can’t give up on it—or give up the fights for social justice, equal political rights, equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.
The forces of repression and neofascism would like nothing better than for us to give up. Then they’d win it all. We cannot allow them to.
We will never give up—not in 2026. Not in 2027 or 2028. Not ever.
We are winning. We will prevail.
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How You Can Help Save Boreal Forests in 2026
Want an easy New Years' resolution? Buy 100% recycled or alternative fiber toilet paper instead of rolls made from virgin forest pulp.
Jan 01, 2026
North America’s boreal forests are crucial for wildlife and the climate, but we’re literally trashing them to make pulp for toilet paper and other disposable paper products.
Companies are clear-cutting a million acres a year, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The northern boreal forests are Earth’s largest terrestrial biome. They’re the breeding grounds for 3-5 billion migrating birds that populate our backyards. And they’re a key carbon sink, storing 20% of global forest carbon and 50% of global soil carbon.
Studies show these forests have been overharvested and degraded to such a degree that the ecological damage will be difficult to reverse. They’re increasingly beset by global warming, melting permafrost, fires (including multi-year, spontaneously reigniting “zombie fires”), and pests, which threaten to destroy them and release their carbon back into the atmosphere.
If every American bought just one roll of toilet paper made from recycled paper rather than a conventional forest-fiber roll, it would save 1.6 million trees, 1 billion gallons of water, and 800 million pounds of greenhouse gases.
The United Nations recently warned of an approaching tipping point that could turn them from carbon sinks to carbon sources. That would be catastrophic. The recent COP30 climate summit, held in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, was billed as “the forest COP.” But its outcomes were dubious for tropical forests—and nonexistent for boreal forests.
But if climate delegates don’t protect them, consumers can—by buying 100% recycled or alternative fiber products instead of toilet paper made from virgin forest pulp.
A market for these alternatives is emerging. The US toilet paper industry is worth $42 billion, but a whopping 68% of US consumers surveyed want eco-friendly toilet paper made from recycled pulp, bamboo, or cornstalks.
If every American bought just one roll of toilet paper made from recycled paper rather than a conventional forest-fiber roll, it would save 1.6 million trees, 1 billion gallons of water, and 800 million pounds of greenhouse gases—the equivalent of taking 72,000 cars off the road for a year, NRDC found.
Eco-friendly toilet paper start-ups have a $1 billion toehold on the overall market so far—little more than 2%. But they’re growing fast. Imagine how many trees, how much water, and how many emissions we’d save if they gained a 68% share.
The big paper companies are imagining it, too. Procter & Gamble (P&G) makes Charmin, the top US toilet paper brand. This year it launched a bamboo version. That gives the company a green-sounding talk point, and a theoretical way into the growing alternative market. But it isn’t really available in stores and doesn’t do anything to change P&G’s bad practices.
It’s well documented that P&G makes regular Charmin by clear-cutting Canadian boreal forests for pulp, cutting down old-growth groves that have stood for a century or more. Only about 20% of these old-growth trees are left.
Any remnant wood left (called “slash”) after logging gets burned, and the land gets plowed and sprayed with glyphosate (RoundUp), eradicating formerly diverse ecosystems that caribou and birds depend on. They’re replaced with monoculture plantations of softwood trees planted in tight rows, worsening vulnerability to wildfires.
Yet P&G has the chutzpah to claim its slash-and-burn practices “absolutely prohibit deforestation” and “incorporate sustainability.” No wonder the company is being sued for greenwashing, with plaintiffs demanding it be held accountable for “egregious environmental destruction of the largest intact forest in the world” and making “false and misleading claims of environmental stewardship.”
Ultimately though, the power to change practices resides with consumers, not courts. Some 90 million Americans buy regular Charmin—and another 5 billion consumers worldwide buy P&G products. Collectively they have enormous power, provided they’re alerted to the problem and aren’t fooled by greenwashing tactics.
But if those conditions are met, consumers can save the boreal forests, one roll at a time.
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Trump's Tariffs Won't End the Bipartisan War on the Working Class
A political economy of corporations and the wealthy lobbying for and receiving increased government help to snag higher profits and market share has ruled the roost of US society.
Jan 01, 2026
As 2025 ended, one thing was as plain as day. American small businesses and their customers are paying a price for global trade tariffs, an import tax, courtesy of President Donald J Trump. How this economic fact plays out legally and politically is an open question, connected with long-running trends.
On the legal front, small businesses, over 700 of them at last count, have joined together as part of an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) to the US Supreme Court with their testimonies against President Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports (Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump).
Recall that the president promised to use tariff revenue on foreign imports to increase American manufacturing. Why the need for tariff revenue to grow private-sector manufacturing across the US?
Corporate America has been disinvesting in industrial production stateside for decades. Shifting manufacturing abroad and eliminating unionized employment for reasons of higher profits has been one of the hallmarks of the US economy under Democratic and GOP administrations. That’s a bipartisan consensus.
Centering kitchen table issues of labor and living conditions can garner working class support in rural and urban America in 2026. The Democratic and Republican parties have billions of reasons to fight such a working-class agenda.
Looking at this trend with a class and politics lens, it's a kitchen table issue. Material reality, such as wage income and prices for groceries and rent, shapes ideology and systemic thinking about the political economy of living and working. The current moment of social tumult has been gathering steam since the end of the Vietnam War, which heralded the sunset of a postwar US economy of broad-based prosperity, with blue collar, family-wage employment for male workers.
Dubbed neoliberalism under successive Democratic and Republican presidents, a political economy of corporations and the wealthy lobbying for and receiving increased government help to snag higher profits and market share has ruled the roost of US society.
That government intervention, from copyrights and patents to misnamed free-trade pacts, favors big business and investors to the detriment of the working class. This trend ushered in the growth of the “working poor.” To be fair, President Trump didn't begin this class war of a few against the many.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court with a conservative majority is expected to issue a decision on a “demand for restitution” from businesses paying the Trump tariffs soon. The case challenges the president’s authority to impose tariffs due to a “large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits,” creating a national emergency.
Persistent implies a long-standing trend. This economic emergency of an imbalance in American exports and imports is a symptom of the corporate agenda. It’s driving both political parties support to deindustrialize America.
Political resistance to this agenda exists, but it’s weak. Think of the rise and fall of the anti-corporate globalization movement decades ago.
On that note, Public Citizen does magnificent work to advance the kitchen table issues of the working majority. However, the other side has unlimited cash to buy politicians, a major reason the corporate agenda barrels ahead.
Centering kitchen table issues of labor and living conditions can garner working class support in rural and urban America in 2026. The Democratic and Republican parties have billions of reasons to fight such a working-class agenda. The parties rely in part upon division to bolster their power and privilege.
Countering such a strategy of the ruling class is a tall order, but a necessary step. There will be many opportunities to build unity against the bipartisan consensus of war and Wall Street and for peace and social justice in the new year.
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Trump's Buffoonery Reveals That the Empire Has No Clothes
Under his leadership, our political structure is naked and exposed, stripped of its political correctness.
Jan 01, 2026
In the Donald Trump era—praise be!—so much is possible that previously no one had ever even imagined. For instance, not only has “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” come back to life, he might even join Trump’s cabinet.
Well, that’s just a guess, but why not? I think he’d fit right in. All of which is to say: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear...” It’s not simply that Trump is unique (i.e., uniquely crazy). He definitely is, but he’s also American to the core. Under his leadership, our political structure is naked and exposed, stripped of its political correctness. The emperor has no clothes! Suddenly we can’t avoid seeing this.
Indeed, we can’t avoid seeing ourselves. As psychologist John Gartner has pointed out, Trump is not only a malignant narcissist, but—as has been clear in his second term—he’s slithering ever more deeply into dementia. Yet people still support him—enough people to let him win elections. Why?
Because, Gartner notes: “He’s beating up on their shared enemies. There’s a psychological appeal that a Hitler-like character has. Someone who feels disempowered feels re-empowered by someone who, in a punitive way, is attacking their shadow enemies and making them feel powerful and entitled to dominate.”
The “war” on terror, the transcendence of terror—the transformation of humanity, of Planet Earth—begins by looking deeply at ourselves and choosing to evolve.
I would add that these “enemies” may simply be pulled out of the blue... a group his supporters weren’t even aware of. But the strongman has declared them to be the enemy: in effect, creating the enemy. What matters is not that a long-despised group of people are getting what they “deserve,” but that the disempowered supporters now have someone they can feel like they’re dominating.
And, yeah, Trump is going crazy, so to speak, attacking various enemies. As Bret Wilkins writes at Common Dreams:
President Donald Trump—the self-described "most anti-war president in history"—has now ordered the bombing of more countries than any president in history as US forces carried out Christmas day strikes on what the White House claimed were Islamic State militants killing Christians in Nigeria...
In addition to Nigeria, Trump—who says he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize—since 2017 has also ordered the bombing of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, as well as boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Trump has also deployed warships and thousands of US troops near Venezuela, which could become the next country attacked by a president who campaigned on a platform of "peace through strength.”
But this “leadership” is anything but unprecedented. As Palestinian-American comedian Sammy Obeid asks, in a comedy routine with more factual clarity than is often present in the official media: What actually is terrorism, this thing we’ve been trying so hard to eliminate for the last couple decades? To find out, he looked up the definition: Terrorism is “using violence to achieve a political goal.”
Uh... America itself is the biggest terrorist of all time, apparently! Or at least it’s well up there on the list. Beyond the Vietnam War—millions dead—there’s the alleged War on Terror, launched by George W. Bush, continued by Barack Obama, eventually ended by Joe Biden.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project: “An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 412,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died ‘indirectly,’ as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure, and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.”
You might say Trump brings the darkness of all this to light. Isn’t that where war belongs—in raw public scrutiny? Perhaps the greatest enemy of peace is the collective justification and abstraction of war by the political and media complex, along with the financial flow making it possible. This is our national infrastructure. Trump is exposing it, not intentionally, but with snarky, 12-year-old honesty, mixed with dementia.
“Terrorism is using violence to achiever a political goal.” The “war” on terror, the transcendence of terror—the transformation of humanity, of Planet Earth—begins by looking deeply at ourselves and choosing to evolve. If we refuse to do so, we have Donald Trump.
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