The resistance is growing, which is the best news you could ask for these days — unless it’s this: The growing resistance actually seems to be working, up to a point anyway.
It’s hardly time to declare victory — not when Trump is abandoning Ukraine, roiling the world economy, ignoring the rule of law, ignoring the Supreme Court, attacking democracy at every turn, sending migrants without trial to gulags, cutting off or reducing vital scientific and health funding, cutting off foreign aid that could lead to millions of deaths, etc., etc., etc. — but maybe, just maybe, we can declare some signs of progress.
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SUBSCRIBESuddenly, Donald Trump and his MAGA team are backing down on issues left and right, although mostly, of course, from Trump’s extremist/authoritarian version of the right.
Trump backed down on his absurd tariffs, when the stock market resisted. He backed down on the cancellation of more than 1,500 student visas held by international students, probably because he was going to lose that battle in court. Or maybe it’s because he’s losing the public-opinion battle on his handling of immigration.
Elon Musk says he is backing away from DOGE to try to rescue his Tesla car company and after finding — by his count — only $150 billion in savings. He had promised, you’ll remember, to find $2 trillion. Maybe he can write an email listing five reasons why he has failed so miserably, perhaps starting with his elimination of funding for a decades-long survey of women’s health. The cut was so shocking that Trump had little choice but to restore it.
And it’s only a matter of time before Trump backs away from his vote of confidence for the grossly incompetent Pete Hegseth, if only to take the heat away from RFK Jr.’s war on vaccines amid the largest measles outbreak in years. (RFK Jr. sort of backed away from saying that the MMR vaccine doesn’t work, but only half heartedly, and while sticking with his phony autism studies.)
In any case, you can see signs of resistance everywhere, including in Trump’s cratering poll numbers.
You see it from those who have stormed GOP town halls. From the hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — who are participating in grassroots “Hands Off” demonstrations across the country.
You see it in Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador that shone a light directly on the (almost certainly) illegal rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll Friday found that, by a 42%-26% margin, a plurality wanted Abrego Garcia returned to the United State from the El Salvador gulag.
A New York Times-Siena poll, also released Friday, said Trump was mishandling the Abrego Garcia case by a 52-31 margin. Maybe California Gov. Gavin Newsom had it wrong when he called the case a distraction.
Some other numbers from that New York Times poll: 66% described Trump’s second term as “chaotic.” And 59% went with “scary.” Which doesn’t make it a surprise that Trump’s approval rating is down to 42%, the lowest for any president at this stage in the modern polling era, even slightly lower than in Trump’s first term.
You can see the resistance in the trip taken by other members of Congress who went to Louisiana detention centers to speak to two graduate students being held there, including Rumeysa Ozturk. If you don’t recall Ozturk, she’s the Tufts PhD student who was snatched and grabbed off the streets by plain-clothed and often-masked ICE agents for the, uh, crime of having once coauthored a piece about divestment from Israel in the school newspaper.
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3:05 AM MDT on Apr 13, 20257:39 PM MDT on Apr 12, 2025You can see it in the fact that there have been 108 rulings, as of Thursday, against Trump that at least pause some of his executive orders. That’s 108 rulings in less than 100 days of the Trump restoration. You think that’s why the FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge, who was charged with two felonies for allegedly obstructing ICE? Does Trump think the judges, who have every right to be worried about their safety, will be scared into silence?
But when they write the history of the resistance — if we still have access to historians when it’s all said and done — they’ll have a chapter on Harvard’s resistance to the Trump administration’s ham-handed, brass-knuckled, full-on-extortion attempt to basically take over the workings of the oldest and most acclaimed university in the United States.
It took a while for Harvard, even with its $50 billion endowment, to grow a spine. But what a spine it grew in the end. When Trump threatened to withhold as much as $9 billion in federal funding if Harvard didn’t bow to its demands, Harvard had no choice but to resist. All Trump wanted was full oversight of which students to admit, which faculty to hire, which students to punish, how to run its medical and divinity schools, how to define academic freedom.
Harvard said not just no, but get-the-hell-outta-here no. In reply, Trump has frozen more than $2 billion in grants — mostly to Harvard-related medical research, which has nothing to do with any of the indictments Trump has made against Harvard — and Harvard has sued to get the money back. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
In Trump’s assault on so-called academic elites, he is using antisemitism as a pretext to end DEI and limit academic freedom. Harvard admits there has been a problem on campus with antisemitism, but that government overreach is not the answer to an issue that has already diminished over time.
Esteemed writer James Fallows called Harvard’s resistance an “I am Spartacus” moment.
Maybe you’ve seen what has come of it. The American Association of College and Universities (AACU) issued a public statement of support for Harvard and other schools targeted by Trump, saying it “opposed undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses” and rejected “the coercive use of public research funding.”
It was not exactly a scorching letter in the mold of the letter Harvard president Alan Garber sent to the school community, but it was strong enough that it’s more than a little surprising that hundreds of often-cautious college presidents agreed to sign on.
By Friday, more than 440 college presidents had signed the letter, including at least four from Colorado — Metro State University of Denver, Colorado College, the University of Denver and Colorado State University.
DU Chancellor Jeremy Haefner put out a statement expressing his “grave concern” over federal actions that “threaten our autonomy and our ability to conduct vital research and best educate our students.”
Haefner added that he is looking for other group actions “where strength in numbers can protect our mission, our students and the future of higher education in the country.”
There will be more signees on the AACU letter, I would guess, because solidarity works. Just ask the Big Ten universities, many of them enemies on the football field, who are working to band together — in sort of a NATO-type alliance against the anti-NATO Trump — to protect any school in the conference that Trump targets.
It’s all part of the resistance. And it’s growing. And if Trump is to be stopped, it must continue to grow.
I’m not sure how Trump ranks the nation’s founders — or how many he could even name. I know he thinks George Washington is the second greatest president. You can guess who tops the Trump list.
But Thomas Paine, one of the founders, one who spoke in radical dissent against tyranny, one who would be railing against Trump with every stroke of his pen, once wrote this: “The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in fear of resistance.”
You think Trump, a would-be despot, fears the resistance? Just ask yourself this: Doesn’t every bully?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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