After Donald Trump’s win in 2024, commentators declared the so-called Resistance “dead” and “futile.” The opposition movement against Trump had been embarrassing, ineffective, a performative failure that did nothing “besides making the #Resisters feel good about themselves.” With the country now nine months into Trump’s second term, though, reports of the death of the Resistance turn out to have been exaggerated. The movement looks different than it did the last time around. It’s more hard-bitten. But it retains the same underlying idealism about the American project that led first to the explosive growth of the coalition, and then to its dismissal by cynics.

Today, in a reprisal of the first “No Kings” rallies that took place in June, millions of protesters will gather around the country

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