What Can Stop Trump?

If there is one thing Iran and Minneapolis have in common, it is that both show the Trump administration’s willingness to pay a high price to push U.S. imperialism’s agenda forward. In the case of Iran, that price is causing global economic havoc and taking election hits, while the U.S. and Israel drop bombs on schoolgirls, kill thousands (including in Lebanon) and raze infrastructure. Early on, the U.S. warmongers killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but this war is not just about regime change. Above all, it is about the U.S. and Israel degrading the standing of a regional rival in order to better control the Middle East and its oil and natural gas resources.

Venezuela and now Iran demonstrate that military intervention to strengthen U.S. supremacy isn’t a one-off measure. Trump has a plan: if a country does not bend over and let the U.S. in, the imperialist overlord will go in and take it, no matter the collateral damage. The U.S. rulers, Democrats and Republicans alike, see their global dominance slipping and will stop at nothing to try to reverse this, including bringing us all down with them.

Inside the belly of the U.S. empire, Minneapolis saw Trump and his thugs lay siege to an entire city and shoot down those, like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who stood in the way. He is seeking to regiment the whole population to fall in line and eat it—or else. Trump pulled most DHS agents back from Minneapolis, but he hasn’t been stopped. In February and March, his administration and local cops inflicted serious damage, arresting over 100 activists in the city. Dozens, including prominent black journalists and community leaders, now face felony charges, including under the 1871 anti-Klan act.

Many families still fear the wrath of ICE and deportation. ICE goons have rounded up union members and organizers from New York to Minnesota to California or targeted them for speaking out. Last week in Texas, anti-ICE activists were railroaded and convicted on bogus domestic terrorism charges for protesting outside the Prairieland detention center. Right now, it is unclear which city Trump will have ICE target next, mainly because his attention is currently focused on international marauding.

As the Iran war escalates, inflation is also escalating. Workers are paying more to get to work, just to work longer and still struggle to keep up. Trump’s tariffs have meant less work in logistics and higher prices for necessities, while the war has caused gas prices to surge. Add to all this increasing housing and healthcare costs. Unemployment is up, and tech jobs were massively slashed. Unions are reeling from last year’s federal funding cuts and other attacks, especially in healthcare and education.

Those workers who have courageously held the line in strike battle, like the NYSNA nurses, have come out of it barely able to keep what they already had, which wasn’t enough to begin with. San Francisco teachers went out on strike and were able to force the school district to pay for healthcare for their dependents. The need to even have to fight for this core benefit is itself a comment on the state of things for the working class.

While the Iran war is unpopular, it has not yet led to mass outrage. Many workers don’t like the war. They are anxious about the economic fallout and don’t want to see their kids come home in body bags, and some recall serving in the Iraq war and witnessing its human cost. Many working-class Trump voters are not happy that he has made a mockery of his promise to stay out of “forever wars.” They do not see this war as having any benefit for them. Despite widespread unease, the protests against the war have been tiny and devoid of any real working-class or trade-union presence. Workers certainly do not see what defense of Iran, or immigrants for that matter, has to do with them and their daily struggle.

Workers will come out when they feel they have a direct stake in doing so. Right now, this is not the case for the vast majority of workers. A severe financial crisis or more deaths of U.S. soldiers could change this sentiment. The nature of the strategy raised now in the unions will be a key factor in determining the course of any struggle. Will it be one that guides the struggle in a direction independent of ruling-class politicians, seeking to unite workers across racial and bipartisan divisions? Or one that aligns with the demands of the liberals and Democrats, ensuring further polarization in the working class, while doing nothing to stop Trump?

Lessons from Minneapolis

Many left groups are pointing to the January 23 protests in Minneapolis as a model for stopping Trump. That day, tens of thousands braved sub-zero temperatures to protest ICE attacks on the Twin Cities. That so many came out to protest was a good thing, and the anger had the potential to be channeled into the kind of action that would strengthen the working class and cause real damage to the Trump regime. But the truth is the union bureaucrats did everything they could to keep their members isolated as individuals during the protests and keep the unions from becoming a real force. There were no union contingents to speak of, or union banners on display, and no work stoppages.

The union leaders left it up to individual members not to work and instead protest or volunteer for ICE patrols and mutual aid efforts. They toed the Democrats’ line, complained that ICE should adopt better methods to carry out its raids and that the unions are shackled by contractual no-strike clauses they willingly concede to. Yes, union leaders put their name on an endorser list and signed off on motions saying that Trump was going too far, but then they washed their hands of the matter while ICE continued to terrorize the city.

The very next day after the January 23 protest, the Feds shot down Alex Pretti in response, which had even some Trump supporters thinking things had gone too far. At the exact moment when the fight needed to be escalated, the Democratic Party opposition went up in smoke after Trump agreed to an investigation of Pretti’s murder and a partial withdrawal of DHS agents. Most union leaders pulled back and refused to endorse the January 30 demo. Instead, they lined up with the Democrats, who just want a legal check on ICE, which is no check at all.

Momentum for labor action got sidetracked by union bureaucrats who said: we fought and won. Union members who did turn out to protest were left scratching their heads about what to do next. Their neighbors still haven’t left their apartments for weeks in fear of ICE, coworkers and students are still in detention centers, friends are still facing arrest and conviction. Meanwhile, divisions between Democratic and Republican coworkers have sharpened. Union members could see that the entire membership wasn’t on board with coming out to protest against ICE. Moral appeals to participate in noise vigils and sit-ins at Target weren’t going to cut it.

The Minneapolis siege was the moment when it was critically necessary to have a strategy that could bridge these divisions. The very fact that the attacks on immigrants are attacks on the unions as well was right in front of everyone’s faces. Dozens of members of UNITE HERE, SEIU, CWA and ATU were rounded up by ICE, not to mention large numbers of non-union workers. But the union leaderships did everything they could to make sure that the defense of immigrants wasn’t posed as a defense of the union as a whole.

Right then and there, it was necessary to wage a political fight against the union bureaucracy and the divisions it helps sow in the class. Cheering liberal activity won’t help, but rather will only make things more difficult. What’s needed is to take head-on the reason there is anti-immigrant sentiment among workers: the ruling class shifts blame from itself and scapegoats immigrants for the miserable conditions of the working class. To counter this, you have to draw a line against the liberals who blame Trump supporters for Trump’s policies and repression. You also have to show how the union bureaucrats are doing the bidding of the ruling class by lining workers up behind its political parties and refusing to wage a real defense of their membership.

In building support in the unions for action against Trump’s siege of Minneapolis, it was necessary to fight against the strategy of the Democrats and the trade-union bureaucrats who were in command of the protest. Neither ever wanted a general strike; they wanted to contain the anger and discontent and build for the midterms. Most left groups refused to frontally take on these liberal politics, instead opting to work alongside the bureaucracy. The left disappears that the Democrats were at the head of this struggle and that in order for it to succeed we needed to organize in opposition to them. Much of the left says January 23 shows we are winning, effectively letting union misleaders off the hook. If January 23 is the best that you can get and a real general strike, then why even bother trying to fight for revolutionary leadership of the working class? Everything is working out wonderfully, let’s keep doing what we are doing.

The truth is, if you refuse to recognize that January 23 wasn’t a general strike, you sure won’t know how to build one on May Day. At best, May Day will be another expression of the same thing, a repeat of Minneapolis, only this time providing a national platform for the Democrats to campaign on the proven lie that if you vote for them in November, things will change for the better. There does need to be massive protests against Trump’s attacks. But it matters for what purpose: to be in step with the No Kings crowd or to show that the working class must take leadership of these struggles. To put it another way, are you an adjunct of the liberals and Democrats or are you drawing a line against them?

No Kings: No Match for Trump

The Democrats are already gearing up, in anticipation of the midterms, to bring people out to a No Kings Day rally at the end of the month. Some left groups are calling it a trial run for May Day. They are looking to capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity owing to Minneapolis, Iran and the affordability crisis to get out the vote. The elections are months away, but if they were held today, the Democrats would likely win, and probably win big. However, that outcome won’t change much in terms of where things are headed. The Democrats have shifted to the right like the ruling class as a whole. They don’t have to pretend so much anymore that there is a hard line between their goals and those of the Trump administration. These days, they are content to quibble entirely over the methods of achieving those goals.

What the Democrats paint as opposition to Trump is, in fact, no opposition at all. Yesterday’s “progressives” like AOC, who once screamed “abolish ICE,” today completely downplay this demand and instead look to make ICE more lawful. The Democrats want ICE to carry out its activities, only in a more “accountable” manner, with warrants and cameras but not the masks.

Far from offering any opposition to the Iran war, they are upset about the way in which Trump cut them out of the decision-making. They want hearings on the process. Earlier this month, Democrats pushed a war powers resolution giving Congress authority over the president, which predictably failed. The response of Democrats to Venezuela wasn’t much different. They had no problem with Trump going in and toppling Maduro to strengthen U.S. imperialism’s position in Latin America and against China. They were simply concerned about doing it in a way that didn’t violate international law. Their opposition to Trump rests on legalistic grounds and has gone nowhere. The Supreme Court ruled that Trump exceeded his authority to impose tariffs, so later that day he imposed tariffs again anyway.

The Democrats complain that Trump has no plan, but it is they who have no plan to stop Trump. They are banking on fissures in MAGA over Epstein and Iran to carry them through November and possibly 2028. The Democrats back Israel to the hilt, the same as Trump; and they want U.S. control over Iran and the entire Middle East too. If they are calling to pull back on this “forever war,” it will be so they can go start another one. They have no intention of calling to stop deportations, reverse the DEI jobs purge or restore collective bargaining rights to federal workers. Those days are over. No matter which party wins in November, the U.S. ruling class will need to resort to increasingly brutal measures to maintain its crumbling dominance over the world and the working class.

For Class Independence

Trump’s approach has been to push until he goes too far, then take a step back and keep pushing again. It is just a matter of time before he again unleashes terror like he did in Minneapolis. It is necessary to fight for the working class to take every opportunity to defend itself, otherwise it will get smashed. This is not just about winning better contracts with the bosses, but about broadening the fight to beat back these other attacks too. Many leftists will say that the struggles against the attacks on Iran, on immigrants and on workers’ livelihoods are linked. But right now, the working class doesn’t see it this way.

To have any chance of preparing workers for the battles ahead, it is necessary to have a strategy to confront the obstacles that hold the working class back. Workers overwhelmingly remain isolated, fighting their struggles in their own corners. They are mistrustful of their coworkers because of how they voted in the 2024 elections. Burning issues like racial oppression and immigration are deemed to be distinct from shopfloor issues and too divisive to touch. But the ability of workers to hold off the bosses will rise or fall depending on whether they take a stand on these other things. The struggles are not separate. Needless to say, if you are batting for the liberals, you will be incapable of driving this point home.

A real counterforce is needed to stop Trump. To get that requires uniting as much of the working class as possible. Liberalism will never be able to win over Trump voters, who hate the way the liberals blame them for supposedly not caring enough about others when they themselves are hurting. Seeking to build unity with liberals prevents building the unity of the working class and will only increase partisan, racial and other divisions.

Unless something is done differently, workers will become demoralized as they face more repression, wars and defeats. Workers very much need to fight back, but it matters on what basis. Socialists have an important role to play: will they go with the flow of the protests that keep workers chained to the Democrats and isolated from one another or will they fight for an independent way forward? There is no time to waste.