Trump is Wrecking Our Environment, Our Economy, Our Democracy, and Our Civil Liberties. People are Fighting Back.

From nationwide “Hands Off” day of protests to “Project 2026,” resistance to Trump 2.0 is starting to build.

People packed the Boston Common on Saturday during the Hands Off! protest in Boston, Massachusetts, one of more than 1,300 demonstrations against the Trump administration held across the United States (plus a handful abroad) on April 5, 2025. Credit: Dana Drugmand

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There’s no sugarcoating it. These are dark, grim times as the Donald Trump regime in the United States takes a wrecking ball or a chainsaw to so many of the things our country stands for – freedom of expression and identity, embracing immigrants, education, healthcare, human rights, democratic checks and balances, the Constitution and the rule of law, the list goes on and on. In a little over two months, Trump and his unelected “co-president” Elon Musk have eliminated much of the federal workforce and consolidated power in the presidency, executing on the blueprint laid out in Project 2025 that explicitly called for dismantling the administrative state. The regime has abducted folks who speak out against oppression and genocide, and has targeted judges, law firms, universities, news media, and other institutions and political opponents.

“Trump and Republicans are using every tool of the government to implement an extreme and cruel right-wing agenda at a speed by which we have never seen before. And they are working every angle while they do this to squash dissent and difference of opinion, whether it be against student protestors, independent reporters, judges, lawyers, or political opponents,” Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive organization MoveOn, said during an online organizing call last week ahead of the Hands Off! nationwide day of protests held on April 5.

These protests were the largest display yet of the resistance to the Trump regime and its fascist takeover of a country that was literally founded through a revolution against a tyrannical king. From Anchorage to Albuquerque, Seattle to San Juan, Americans turned out in droves on Saturday to say “hands off” our rights, our communities, our public services, our jobs, and so much more. Millions of people came out in more than 1,300 demonstrations across the United States and beyond, according to event organizers; MoveOn described it as “one of the single largest days of protest in history.”

“This marks the largest day of collective action since Trump’s inauguration, with everyday people turning out in record numbers to defend their healthcare, wages, education, civil rights, and democracy. Organizers and attendees cited moves Trump has taken to gut workers’ rights, dismantle our healthcare and constantly increasing prices for all Americans as major contributors to the increased enthusiasm,” the Hands Off! 2025 website reported.

“What we witnessed today was nothing short of extraordinary,” Epting said in a statement. “Across the country and around the world, people came together to say: we will not be silent while our rights, our futures, and our democracy are under attack.”

These attacks are happening amidst a backdrop of a rapidly overheating planet and ongoing ecological deterioration. As scientists explained in the 2024 state of the climate report: “Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.” Phasing out fossil fuels that are at the root of intersecting health and environmental crises is an imperative, scientists say, but the Trump regime is doing precisely the opposite, worsening the climate emergency and risking long-term economic calamity. A new study from researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia finds that global heating of more than 3°C this century could destroy 40% of the value of the world economy (measured by GDP).

Credit: Dana Drugmand

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While the Hands Off! protests were not climate action demonstrations per se, climate action is inextricably linked to defending democracy and to organizing around a whole host of issues, from healthcare to economic justice. As Gus Speth, a leading system change advocate, told me in an exclusive interview published by One Earth Now earlier this year: “We are so siloed in our range of concerns. There are a series of issues which are fundamental to environmental success and to climate success. But having a democracy that really works, and dealing with social and political issues, is fundamental to dealing with the environmental issues.”

Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland made a similar point in speaking last month on a call hosted by a youth-led, direct action group called Climate Defiance. Saving the human species from climate catastrophe, Raskin said, “first requires us to save democracy on Earth.”

“The struggle to defend democracy and to expand and strengthen democracy is the same struggle to defend our climate and to try to get us out of the age of carbon emissions, which is now a dagger pointed at the throat of humanity,” Raskin added.

Climate Defiance recently launched a new organizing strategy that it calls “Project 2026.” It is a kind of grassroots, leftist response to Project 2025, which over 100 right-wing organizations – many tied to fossil fuel money and interests – backed. Project 2026, according to Climate Defiance, is a “people’s movement to quash fascism and end the era of fossil fuels.” It consists of four strategic pillars: 1) directly targeting billionaire oligarchs; 2) targeting Musk and Trump; 3) pressuring Democratic leadership; 4) going after vulnerable Republicans that do Trump’s bidding.

Whether through disruptive, direct action confrontations (which is how Climate Defiance generally operates), or through demonstrations against Tesla, or through massive, nationwide protests, people are starting to rise up and resist the cruelty and chaos inflicted by Trump and Musk.

“Boston runs on Dunkin, and Boston also runs on resistance, and it has for 250 years,” Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts told a crowd of tens of thousands at the Hands Off! protest in Boston, invoking the revolutionary history of this city. I was there in the crowd in Boston. Similarly big crowds were seen in cities like New York and Washington DC.

Raskin spoke at the DC event, where he listed off an array of public goods and federal laws that he says people are rising up to defend.

“We are not only the liberals who believe in liberty. We are not only the progressives who believe in progress,” he told the crowd. “We are the conservatives who will defend the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. Everything their party of nihilists and authoritarians want to tear down in the next few weeks, we are going to conserve and defend for future generations of Americans.”

This Hands Off! day of protests certainly won’t be the last. There will be more demonstrations and opportunities to come together and stand up for everything we love and value.

“This peaceful movement is powered by everyday people—nurses, teachers, students, parents—who are rising up to protect what matters most,” MoveOn’s Epting said. “We are united, we are relentless, and we are just getting started.”